


Here Lies Merlin

by wreckageofstars



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action, Angst, Case Fic, Character Study, Drama, F/F, Gen, Give Yaz A Sword 2k20, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, post-Revolution of the Daleks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:29:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24888385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreckageofstars/pseuds/wreckageofstars
Summary: ["You know the story,” she breathes. "Don’t you? There’s a wizard living backwards through time, laying the bricks for a castle with their own blood. And there’s a girl, being raised to be a king."]Yaz is travelling alone with the Doctor in the wake of everything they've been through. A familiar distress signal brings them to a walled city on the sea, where the inhabitants are much older than they seem...and the Doctor is in far more danger than she knows.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan, Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 52
Kudos: 125





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

> (Nothing too far beyond the bounds of the show (or at least its tie-in content) but mind the mild violence! I promise mostly no one dies <3)

“It’s just a story,” the Doctor murmurs in her ear, in uncharacteristic deference to the surrounding mood. “It’s always just a story, but it’s not a bad one, eh? To have travelled this far, lasted this long.”

Yaz gazes at the monument just beyond them, through the solemn crowd and the symbolic rope and the solitary guard. A sword in a stone glints in the watery daylight.

“Myths and legends have power,” she continues, warm breath in Yaz’s ear, quietly delighted. She smells like engine grease today, a hint of ozone and burnt toast. Messing about with the console again, Yaz thinks dryly. Probably with the blackened fingertips to show for it. “More than that, they form _patterns_. They get picked up and reused and recycled, people— _need_ something from them. Something important.” She settles back on her heels, and when Yaz glances to her, searching, she’s gone all contemplative. Withdrawn, again. As if on cue, the watery sun above them disappears behind a cloud. _Something I don’t understand_ , Yaz almost expects her to say, but she doesn’t. There’s always something on the tip of her tongue, these days, but she never says it. Or if she says it, Yaz doesn’t hear it.

“Maybe what we need is reassurance,” Yaz offers. “A story like King Arthur, it’s about the promise, isn’t it? The promise that when things get really dark, he’ll return to save us all.”

 _(On the nose! Five points_ , she waits for, and that blinding smile.

 _Oi_ , she’d reply then, grinning. _How can you be awarding points when I’m the only one here?_ )

But the Doctor lives inside her own head, these days, and she only smiles absently, eyes far away. Gaze fixed on glinting stone. “Maybe,” she whispers, and it feels as terrible as any judgement.

 _Don’t be stupid_ , something old and sharp whispers at the back of her head. _Don’t expect anything you don’t deserve_.

“Is there more to see?” Yaz asks, because the Doctor needs leading questions, these days. A reminder of the script, a nudge in familiar directions. “Severn said we’d find lots to look at.”

“Always,” the Doctor mutters, still absent, but only for a second more. The question clicks, and her eyes brighten, teeth glinting into a smile. “Oh, yeah. Shall we have a nose around?”

She offers Yaz her elbow, jauntily, uncharacteristic. For a moment, Yaz almost falters. _Look but don’t touch_ tends to be the norm with the Doctor, boney fingers only wrapping around her wrist when it’s time to run. Maybe it’s an apology, she thinks next, shrewdly, but she shoos the thought away. Gift horses, she thinks finally, linking elbows with a smile. Not to be looked in the mouth. Whatever that means.

“We shall,” she says, raising her nose in the air, playing posh. The Doctor’s face wrinkles into a laugh, and for just a moment, she’s won.

Ransek is a renaissance fair wrapped in a rainforest, with a few extra moons to match. A city built into stone, walled off from the sea, towering up and up. A human colony, the Doctor had told her as they’d ventured out of the TARDIS, stashed away in a dripping back alley, when she’d finally honed in on the odd energy readings the TARDIS had picked up while they’d been orbiting a moon half a galaxy away. Well, probably. Her history was rusty, apparently, and this corner of the galaxy was small and not especially keen on keeping things written down in order. Humanity progressed in drips and starts, she’d continued. The sword in the stone said it best. The humans here had arrived centuries ago and taken to the setting with gusto, and what had followed was a pattern in and of itself. A rise and fall to rival the Romans, and what was left in the ashes of it was tentatively technological and obsessed with myth.

The sword in the stone is charming, Yaz has to admit. And the assortment of thatched cottages and stone houses spiralling amidst the dripping forest just beyond is a picture she won’t soon forget. But beyond that—

“It’s a bit,” she says, as they dodge a puddle in tandem, feet scuffing against cobbled stone. Ransek’s streets are narrow, sharp turns and thin alleys. “Well, it’s a bit—”

“Quiet,” the Doctor finishes the thought for her, almost mournful. “Sorry. Must have caught history at a boring moment.”

“Thought there weren’t no such thing.”

“Are you kidding? History’s full of dull bits. The nice thing about time travel is usually you can skip right over them.” She shakes her head. “There were a good few thousand years between the point you lot decided you’d like to stop being monkeys and the point you decided you were probably not-monkey enough that were just _horrifically_ dull. Also, 2005. Can you remember anything remotely interesting happening in 2005?”

“I was six,” Yaz replies, and the Doctor raises her eyebrows, as if this somehow proves her point.

“I’m only saying—”

Yaz nudges her gently, as they maneuver around another puddle sunk into the stone. “—it could be worse. I’m sorry I mentioned it. Maybe we need a bit of quiet.”

She’s pressing on buttons she knows she shouldn’t, and the Doctor shutters in response, humming noncommittally. Yaz waits for her to remove her arm from Yaz’s grasp, but she doesn’t. Maybe it’s still an apology.

In her heart, Yaz is convinced she’s right. They do need some quiet. They do need some room to breathe, after the Master and Gallifrey and all those Daleks, and if the Doctor won’t talk, then at least she might rest. Really, it’s times like this she misses Ryan and Graham. Well, she misses them all the time anyway, their warmth, their balance. Ryan would have stepped in every puddle they’ve missed, and by now Graham would be complaining about lunch, and it would all feel lighter, even when so much of that lightness from before had just been part of the script. She can’t always pull the Doctor away from herself, alone. Alone, there’s no buffer when she pushes too hard. No recourse, no way to corner her into admitting what’s wrong. And maybe that’s right, maybe that’s better. Maybe it had been too hard on her, all three of them, always pressing, pressing.

All she knows is that it’s not quite as flippant, not quite as fun as she’d imagined, when she’d stepped into the TARDIS with no one to follow her for the first time. When she’d left them behind for the adventure she knew was still waiting. Gallifrey is in ruins. She’d thought that now that secret wasn’t a secret anymore, the Doctor’s shoulders might be lighter, but if anything, the opposite has proven true. She’d returned to them hair shaggy, coat ragged, with less to say than ever before, but Yaz had stayed anyway. The best person she’s ever met is still in there. A childish, desperate part of her is convinced that if she’s only smart enough, clever enough, brilliant enough, maybe she can coax that person back out into the light again. Maybe one day she’ll finally say the right thing, the thing that will convince the Doctor she’s someone worth trusting. Someone worthy of whatever she keeps hidden behind her teeth, on the tip of her tongue.

She keeps hoping, anyway. And maybe it’s fruitless, but it’s not the only reason she stays. The other reasons, she thinks, eyes catching on a massive clocktower in the distance, are far more complicated. But there’s so much more to see, out there. Why shouldn’t she see it? So much more, and why shouldn’t she have it? She’s got the universe clasping her hand, and only an idiot would let that go.

And at the end of the day—her fingers tighten absently around the Doctor’s elbow. At the end of the day, she has a feeling that neither of them do well on their own. Alone in the dark.

Severn meets them by the clock tower, which looms out to sea, ticking under the sound of the waves. The walls keep the sea out, he’d explained to them when they arrived. It glitters just beyond everything, throws salt and brine up Yaz’s nose.

“Well?” He beams at them. Tall and thin and youthful, blonde hair only just starting to go white at the edges. “It’s quite something, isn’t it.”

The Doctor sends him a tight smile in appeasement. The one that says ‘well, not really’, without really saying it.

“Very cool,” Yaz tries, squinting into the late day sun. “How did the sword get there?”

“It was placed by a wizard,” he says, touching the side of his nose with a finger, still beaming. “The dear friend and companion of an early king. Or so the stories say. Likely as not, it was an old ruler or an advisor, hoping to capitalize on the story. Or hoping to bring in the tourists.” His smile never falters, even though the words tinge a hint bitter. “Still, it’s a spectacle. One so does love spectacle.”

“Spectacle,” the Doctor interrupts. “Speaking of, Severn, that thing I mentioned I was looking for earlier, I still haven’t found it.”

“A shame,” he says. “If I could only aid you further—”

“No, no, you’ve been wonderful help,” Yaz smoothes. “It’s just, we were wondering if we could have your leave to keep looking. Maybe in some parts of the city that aren’t as keen on visitors?”

His lips purse. For a moment she thinks he’s going to refuse.

“Well, of course,” he says eventually, and perhaps his unhappiness is genuinely for their plight, and not for their encroachment on his boring little city. “But it will be nightfall soon. My city is…well, travellers may find themselves ill-equipped to deal with the peculiarities of it in the dark.”

“Peculiarities?” The Doctor leans forward, eyebrows raising with interest, but he waves a hand dismissively.

“Nothing exciting,” he says. “Pickpockets and thieves. Criminals and ne’er’do’wells. We do our best to discourage crime, but,” he shrugs. “Nowhere’s perfect. Please, allow me to host you for the evening. Perhaps I can spare some time to aid you in your search tomorrow.”

The Doctor rocks back on her heels. It’s an unhappy movement. Her nose twitches, but she smothers it before it can become a full-on scrunch of displeasure.

“Sure,” she says, stilted. “Very kind of you.”

He smiles again. “Of course.” A hand gestures towards cobbled streets. “My residence is this way. Please, come. My wife will be delighted.”

“Delighted by unexpected company?” Yaz mutters, as they tread behind him. “Not like my mum at all, then.”

They set in, just behind him, as he leads them further up, up, through more cobbled streets lined with well-kept houses. The sun leaks through the cracks between buildings, low in the sky.

“Severn,” the Doctor asks as they walk, taking in the late day air. “Pardon me for asking, ‘cos it’s a bit rude, isn’t it, but how old are you?”

“I’ll be fifty-five this coming summer,” he smiles over his shoulder. The Doctor’s brow wrinkles.

“He don’t look a day over thirty,” Yaz whispers, words hidden under the roar of the sea breeze. “What’s that about?”

“Human evolution,” the Doctor hums. “Really good skin cream?” Her face sours. “Nah, it’s a bit odd, really, isn’t it.”

“How odd are we talking?” Yaz presses close as they duck under a swinging pub sign. The wind picks up as the sun departs, apparently. Brine tickles her nose. The smell of old stone. “You never did say exactly what the TARDIS picked up.”

The Doctor’s voice is still mild. She’s far from Yaz’s reach, again, and lying through her teeth. “Something that shouldn’t be here,” is all she says.

Dinner is a strained affair. Severn’s home is as grand as befits his status as the colony’s governor, which only means his house is bereft of comfortable furniture. The engraved dining chair digs into the small of Yaz’s back. The wine she’s offered sits in its glass, untouched. Severn’s wife, Melin, sits across from her, pallid in the grand, velveted gloom. The hand holding her soup spoon trembles as she brings it to her mouth, but no one remarks, or even seems to notice.

She returns Yaz’s careful smiles tentatively, but she never speaks.

“Forgive my wife,” Severn tells them, once the dinner plates have been cleared away by robed, silent servants. More drinks appear, set in front of them like magic. Yaz ignores hers, again. The Doctor sips diligently, but twists her face when Severn isn’t looking.

It’s the bitterness, Yaz thinks, half a guess, half a hunch. Alien taste buds, though she’s never said, of course. Yaz notices these things, though. The Doctor downs anything remotely sweet with gusto but turns her nose at the first hint of sourness, bitterness. Yaz imagines what must be an overwhelming taste coating her own mouth and shudders. Small sacrifices, but they pile up, don’t they. All the more odd for the fact that she doesn’t always bother with it so much, these days. Playing human.

“Is she alright?” Yaz asks. Severn’s wife had drifted away with the servants, soundless.

Severn’s youthful face settles into a frown. For a moment, he almost looks his age.

“My newborn son has taken ill,” he says simply. “She spends long nights, worrying. We both do.”

The Doctor’s brow melts into sympathy. Yaz thinks of the other woman’s eerie silence and can only frown.

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor says. “You’re very gracious, to have us as company.”

“It’s no trouble,” he insists with a waved hand. His own after-dinner drink is half-emptied at his other side, amber liquid catching the candlelight. “Life goes on,” he says quietly, almost to himself. He eyes them from across the table, the golden buttons lining his jacket glinting in the same light that catches his glass. “Life goes on. It must.”

“Yes,” the Doctor agrees, but it’s absent. Caught behind her teeth. “I suppose.” She clears her throat with little grace. Her chair scrapes across the shiny hardwood and Yaz muffles a wince. “Still, you’re very kind. Dinner was lovely. Can I borrow Yaz for a walk along your lovely sea wall?” She smiles at him, tight. “Only it’s a beautiful sunset. So I’ve heard.”

His face softens. “Of course,” he says with a smile. “It’s not to be missed.”

The sea wall is wide and tall. Yaz peers down with vague interest as the waves break across it and shatter, gleaming orange in the sunset. It’s slippery, too. Slimy with brine and algae. A complete picture, somehow. The muck at her feet and the sun gleaming like an ornament in the distance, setting colours across the waves as it disappears.

“It’s beautiful,” she remarks. “You were right.”

“Oh, yeah,” the Doctor agrees mildly, hands shoved in her pockets. Eyes fixed on the rocks and bracken far below them. Searching.

“Have you got a feeling?” Yaz eyes whatever it is she’s looking at, but sees nothing. The Doctor’s clearly exactly where she wants to be, though. The faintest, irritating thought that the resignation she’d sensed earlier had clearly been a lie, part of a larger plan intrudes. A plan Yaz hasn’t been made aware of. “What are we looking for, exactly? You never said.”

 _You never say_.

“Could be nothing,” she replies, far too lightly. The sun catches gold in her hair, in her eyes. When she flashes Yaz the briefest of little smiles, it feels like the sun on her back. “Probably nothing.”

“What if it’s not nothin’?” Yaz dares to ask. She presses closer, still daring. Peers down into the rocks, frowning. “‘Cos let’s be honest, it almost never is.”

“It could be, this time!” There’s a half-heartedness to the script. The light protest in her voice is brittle. “First time for everything,” she mutters good-naturedly.

Yaz smiles. If she’s honest, this is the part she likes best. Well, the running part is good, too. So is the ‘saving the day’ part, as well as the ‘putting things right’ part. But the itch in her craves adrenaline. It sings in her. Raised hair on the back of her neck, legs ready to bolt, eyes ready to seek—it’s fast. It’s _good_. And the part that comes just before it, the anticipation—that’s _better_.

She thinks the Doctor likes it too. She thinks the Doctor hates that she likes it, a bit. She thinks the Doctor hates that Yaz likes it, even more.

But danger and wonder go hand in hand, just like they do. More of the universe means more of everything. She could never settle for anything less than the entire picture, and she _knows_ the Doctor is the same.

How could you ever, she wonders, gazing at the sun dripping red below the horizon, get a view like this if you weren’t willing to stand on the edge?

Like a test of her faith, the Doctor’s knees nearly buckle. Yaz pulls at her sleeve, clasps her elbow, drags them back from the edge. The Doctor stiffens in her grasp, and Yaz drops her arm like she’s been burned.

“Are you ok?” she asks, trying not to make it sound like a demand. The Doctor blinks. It’s an unsteady look that she shakes off in an instant. Brief smile, white teeth.

“Yeah,” she reassures. “Thanks. Bit of a wobble,” and her nose scrunches, “nothing to worry about.”

“It’s always something to worry about,” Yaz mutters, thinking pointedly of the Punjab, but the Doctor’s already turned away to wander further down the wall. There’s an intensity to her uneven footsteps. Like a dog that’s caught a scent. “Doctor—“

The word hits her back. The wind whips Yaz’s hair out of its plait as she follows. Her feet skid on the stone underneath, and maybe that’s all it was. Brine and algae underfoot. The sun dips further beneath the line of the sea, and Yaz’s mood sinks with it.

She trails behind the Doctor as they make their way further along the wall, further away from the melting sun and Severn’s home. Waves crack across, pulling in debris off the sea, pulling away to reveal black and shiny rocks underneath.

The Doctor pauses. Kneels. Leans half her body over the wall’s tentative stone railing, straining. Her hair falls to cover her face. Waves crash, far below, and for a moment, whatever she’s looking at is concealed.

Yaz crouches, not too close. Not too far, either, a hand hovering to grab if necessary. “Doctor,” she says. “What is it?” Now she’s closer to the edge, she can see better. At the curve of the wall, there’s a large pile of rocks, glinting in the red. Jagged pieces of earth, run through with broken ship and other ragged shapes she doesn’t recognize. Wood and metal and—round, broken pieces. Corals grown into the rocks and the wall. The wind catches in them mournfully.

“A TARDIS,” the Doctor breathes, face caught between a scowl and something worse. “I could hear it. It was calling out, across the universe.”

Yaz blinks. “What?”

The Doctor wavers again, glassy-eyed, but there’s no time to worry, no time to wonder, no time to yank her back to safety. Something sharp presses against the small of Yaz’s back, and before any worthwhile instincts can kick in, she’s wrestled away from the edge, dragged kicking and shouting, arms twisted behind her. She struggles fruitlessly, but whoever’s got a hold of her kicks her legs out from beneath her, sends her crashing knee-first into cobbled stone.

“Doctor—” she pants, squinting against the sharp pain in her knees. The sun is nearly gone. What’s left of it blankets them all in an eerie red. When he steps forward, it catches in Severn’s hair, carves out the shadows of his face.

“I thought you might find it,” he says quietly. The wind almost carries his words away. “In fact, I was rather counting on it. You’ve no idea how hard it’s been, to find another. We’ve waited many summers.”

The Doctor glares up at him, still braced against the railing, thin-lipped.

Severn tilts his head. “You are a Time Lord,” he says. “Are you not?”

For a horrifying moment, it almost looks like the Doctor is going to laugh. Instead, she twists her face, and settles more firmly into her glare.

“Let my friend go,” she demands. Her elbow wobbles, and Yaz watches with a twinge of dismay as her arm nearly gives out. She thinks of the amber liquid in their dinner glasses, so reluctantly sipped. The Doctor’s glassy-eyed stumbling. It’s not even an elegant trap, she can’t help but think, knees still stinging. But they’d walked right into it, anyway.

The hands around Yaz’s arms tighten. She swallows back a hiss of pain. Severn keeps his eye trained on the Doctor, impassive.

“One was stranded here, summers and summers ago, you see.” He settles his arms behind his back genially. “We welcomed him with open arms, of course. We get so few visitors from off-world, here. He was so kind. So strange, too. My ancestors thought him a wizard.” Severn’s cavernous face smiles gently. “He could perform such tricks.”

“That TARDIS,” the Doctor strains, fingers whitening into fists where her hands meet stone, “has been stripped for parts and bashed against the rocks. It’s still alive. It’s _obscene_.”

“Of course it’s still alive,” he counters. “How else could it call another here?”

The Doctor struggles to one knee. “What happened to your other visitor?” Yaz can see it sick in her face, the other question. _Are they still alive?_

“He fixed his ship, eventually. But his tricks were so wondrous,” Severn says. “He healed our sick and fixed our machines, in gratitude for our hospitality. We couldn’t let him leave.” The hands behind his back unclasp, to shrug at his sides. “He stayed with us, for many summers, though his face often changed. My father knew him, and my father’s father, and his father’s father. I grew up knowing him. He taught me well. I thought him a dear friend.”

“And?” Yaz demands, and the hands around her arms tighten for her trouble.

Severn’s hands spread, another shrug. “He passed, many summers ago. Ever since, my people have suffered. My family—” For just a moment, his voice wavers. “But now, you’re here.” He steps forward, head tilting. “You are a Time Lord,” he asks again. “Yes?”

“Don’t like bullies,” the Doctor spits. “Not a big fan of kidnappers, either, which is what you are. Not a fan at all,” she says, throat strangling, “of people that willingly subvert the natural order of things. You’re only human, Severn. Or you were, once. Best you stay that way, believe me.”

“You all possess the same power,” he says, ignoring her. Transfixed. “Power over life and death. You hoard it, while lesser species rot in the ground. I heard my old friend speak of your civilization. I know what you think of us all.”

There’s a despair in her eyes that speaks to the other Time Lord’s death, and something else that Yaz doesn’t recognize. Something strange and bitter.

“Not me,” she whispers. The roar of the sea almost swallows it. There’s no sun left now, only the eerie glow of gas lamps that stutter to life, far above them. “Never me.”

“Still.” There’s an odd look in his eye. Yaz’s blood sings with danger. “Perhaps you require some persuasion. Perhaps I require some proof.” He gives an absent nod in Yaz’s direction.

“Severn,” the Doctor warns sharply, panic darting behind her eyes, a fish between reeds. The pressure on Yaz’s arms disappears. Something cold slides in between her ribs, to take its place. Lightning fast, in and out in a breath, and there’s a foot on her back, propelling her forward to gasp like a fish against the cobbled stone.

It should hurt. It does hurt, probably, but she’s more surprised than anything. She’s watching herself bleed to death on cold stone, far away from the action. Irritated, mostly, that she hadn’t been fast enough, hadn’t been _clever_ enough.

“Sorry,” she mumbles through the metallic taste in her mouth, and the ground is very cold, and the lights are very bright, and the Doctor is caught in them, set aflame, golden and glowing and terrified—

Cool hands at her temple. Cold lips at her own.

Probably, it’s her imagination.


	2. ii.

Green strands invade her sleep. Creeping gloom she can’t escape. Infinity spreading out, a field of twisted braids, with her at the centre. Alone. Always alone.

It’s an old dream, now.

Yaz wakes—Yaz _wakes_?— to sunlight streaming in and the taste of blood on her lips. A strange mix of relief and dread floods the space between her ribs, as she counts the seconds, relishes the breaths she hadn’t been certain she’d ever take again. Relief: that she hasn’t bled to death on cobbled stone. Dread: because she doesn’t understand _how_. More dread, because even with her eyes half-open and her mind full of fog, she knows the Doctor isn’t here.

Her fingers bunch in the silk underneath her. A velvet canopy towers overhead. When she turns her head towards the window, the sea looming just beyond, Severn’s wife is waiting, perched silently in an uncomfortable chair beside her bed. She has kind eyes and a thin, strained face. In the gloom of last night’s dinner, she’d blended into the shadows. In the watery light of day, she’s just as invisible.

“You’re alright,” she whispers, marvelling. “You’re awake.”

Yaz raises a trembling hand to her lips. Her fingers come away bloodless. Her eyelids feel sticky with exhaustion but beyond that—

She raises herself up onto her elbows. Then she sits up. She’s _fine_.

“Where’s the Doctor?” she demands, more dread pooling in. She throws off the fine sheets covering her legs, scowling down at the nightdress they’ve put her in. Lace and silk. Nothing like her.

Severn’s wife startles at her sudden movement. Yaz searches absently for her name in the back of her mind. Melin. A thin, watery name for a thin, watery person. Her hair the same colour as wheat hangs limp down her back. She’s as young as Yaz is—or at least, she looks it.

“I’m so glad,” she whispers, trembling to slippered feet. She offers Yaz a hand, avoiding the question. “I’m so glad.”

Yaz ignores her offer of help and stands with ease. She feels impossible. Strong and tired. So exhausted she might fall asleep on her feet, so full of energy she could climb a thousand city steps. It’s unnatural.

Unease sits in her throat. Her eyes catch on Melin’s youthful face, and the sympathy still lingering in her gut evaporates. Unnatural.

“Where is she?” she demands again.

Melin flinches away, caught between extremes. Relief and what might be guilt. What Yaz hopes is guilt. Guilt is useful. Guilt will get her into closed doors and out of locked gates. Guilt might get her and the Doctor beyond these walls that have trapped them.

“I’ll take you,” Melin breathes. “I’ll take you, of course.”

’Take’ is quite literal. Melin clasps her arm in her trembling hands and leads her by the elbow down stone steps, through stone doors. From a distance, they must look like two friends. A lady and her chambermaid. The truth is, Yaz could overpower her in a second. In her mind, she does it a hundred times, on their journey down, down. She casts aside that frail grip and runs and runs. She becomes the person she’d like to be. The hero, for once. _Worthy_.

But if she’s learned anything from the Doctor, it’s that heroics need to be carefully timed, and if there’s a bloodless alternative, then they won’t do at all. Better to wait, and learn, and listen. Better to talk her way out, if she can.

If she can.

She swallows back her anger and her indignation. She lets the sympathy smothered in her gut surface again.

“How long have I been asleep?” she asks quietly, relaxing her arm against Melin’s frail grip as they walk together through Severn’s sprawling manor. A prisoner and her unlikely warden. She soothes the frown from her face. Lightens. Two friends, she thinks firmly. A lady and her chambermaid.

“A day and a night,” Melin whispers, though there’s no one in the corridor to listen. She leads Yaz down velveted corridors, across carpets draped over heavy stone. Severn’s house is full of riches, but there’s nothing to stave off the damp, nothing to bring it any life. The gloom sucks away any vibrance Melin has, leaves her sallow in the shadows. Eventually, her hand on Yaz’s elbow takes them to narrow stairs, spiralling down into the dark.

“I was so worried, at first,” she whispers. “When I saw what they’d done. I’m so terribly sorry.”

Her cold fingers tighten around Yaz’s arm.

“You must think us monsters,” she says.

They pause at the edge of the stairs. Cold air wanders up to kiss Yaz’s face, musty and damp under her nose.

“You have no idea what I think,” she says finally. She thinks of the Doctor’s face when she’d learned the other Time Lord was dead. She thinks of the other TARDIS, smashed and scattered on the rocks. “And you have no idea what you’ve done,” she says, shivering.

They descend together, still a parody of something kinder. Yaz scowls down at the long skirt of her nightdress, at the way it twists and tangles around her ankles. Melin’s slippers make no noise on the stone. She takes each step carefully, with none of Yaz’s irritation, used to the hindrance.

A cavernous room behind a heavy wooden door opens to them at the bottom of the long, spiralling stairs, carved from stone and dripping rock. Salt and brine fill Yaz’s nose. The sea, barely held at bay. Water pools in the corners. Rotted-out bookshelves line the rock, rugs spotted with mildew, everything set to shadows by flickering oil lamps on the ground. There’s a rotting, decaying armchair in the nearest corner—and a figure, slumped. Waiting.

“Doctor,” Yaz breathes, wrenching easily from Melin’s grasp.

Metal clangs, as Severn’s men peel themselves away from the bare walls, but she barely notices. She doesn’t care. The memory of steel through her spine feels like a dream, and she still feels impossible, impenetrable. Let them try again. Let them try again, and—

Her heart sinks with her knees as she crouches in front of the arm chair. The Doctor raises her head, finds her fingers fumblingly, frowning. The frown breaks like a wave. She breathes out, relieved, and tries an unconvincing smile.

“Yaz. Are you okay?” she asks, and her hesitant fingers untangle from Yaz’s own to tilt her chin, look into her eyes. Confirming what she must already know, and it sits in Yaz’s stomach with terrible unease.

“Yeah,” Yaz strangles, unused to the intimacy of her hands so near, dismayed by the shadows carved out under her eyes. _How?_ “Are you?”

All she gets is another smile. The unease only grows.

“Doctor,” Yaz says. The careful, chilly fingers drop from her chin. “What have you done?”

 _What’s the plan?_ is the question she keeps behind her tongue. The Doctor’s eyes are hard to read, though, and Yaz divines nothing except a feeling that sinks her heart further into her stomach. The Doctor’s gaze drops with her hands, and she glances to the shadows between the rotted-out bookcases that line the walls.

Severn emerges from them, undisturbed.

“Well?” he asks, genially. The armoured men plastered to the wall behind him track his movements. Yaz feels the weight of their gaze, watching them, and swallows. “She’s alive. She’s in your grasp. Our end of the agreement is fulfilled.”

“Not fulfilled,” the Doctor corrects. She stands. Yaz rises with her, unwilling to stray too far, though the set of her shoulders is screaming for distance. “I want a guarantee of her continued safety. I want your word she’ll be allowed to leave. And an escort back to our TARDIS, which you also won’t touch.”

There’s a terrible edge to her voice. Yaz thinks queasily of the other TARDIS, smashed at the bottom of the sea, wailing across galaxies. And the words sink in—

“No,” she says sharply, plait flipping against her shoulders as her head turns back to the Doctor.Incredulous. “No way.”

The Doctor ignores her. The Doctor won’t even look at her.

“You don’t touch a hair on her head,” the Doctor says steadily, eyes gleaming. “And you can have me.”

“No—” Yaz protests, stepping forward, but the Doctor grabs hold of her wrist, squeezes. The set of her shoulders is rigid. Yaz isn’t sure how to read any of it, she’s never sure anymore, she’s not sure of anything, does the line of her neck mean _trust me, please_ , or does it mean something worse, something terrible? _Trust me, please, while I throw myself over the edge. Trust me, please, while I drive myself into the ground. Trust me, please, while I make you watch._

Yaz tears herself free and shoves her hands under her armpits, jaw clenching. The Doctor frowns in brief surprise, but her attention is drawn, inevitably, back to Severn.

“Of course,” he says, and his voice is warm. Surprised, even. Like the Doctor’s tone is somehow unwarranted. “You are my honoured guest. I will happily escort your friend back to your ship, as per our arrangement.”

“No,” Yaz protests, turning to the Doctor. “I’m not leaving without you.”

 _Not again_ , she doesn’t say, but the echo of it reaches the Doctor’s face anyway and she scowls.

“What are you doing?” It’s a stupid question, out here in the open where there’s no hope of a straight answer. But there’s an uncomfortable voice in the back of her head whispering that a straight answer is no guarantee, even when they’re alone. Not anymore. Maybe not in the first place. “What are you thinking, agreeing to all this?”

The Doctor still won’t look at her.

“You don’t make my choice for me,” Yaz insists. Unease, unease, burbling away in her stomach. “You don’t get to decide where I go, or what I do.”

That sharpens her. Her head flicks up, gaze steely. “Yes, I do,” she says. “Top of the mountain, remember?”

“And look where that’s got us.”

The Doctor doesn’t flinch, but her jaw jumps, once.

“Yaz,” she says. “Please.” Her dark eyes grow shiny. She’s turned to pleading instead, but it won’t work this time. There’s not a single tear that will get Yaz to leave her behind again. There’s nothing in the universe.

“Never,” Yaz says, low in her throat. “You’re stuck with me.”

She tears her gaze from the Doctor’s, looks to Severn instead. Better to talk her own way out, if she can. Talk her way out, before the Doctor does it for her.

“I don’t want to leave,” she says. “I’m staying here.”

He blinks. Yaz watches carefully for any slip, for the warmth to drain from his terribly youthful face, but he only smiles again in acknowledgment.

“Your friend wishes otherwise,” he points out, and it’s true. It’s like standing next to a storm cloud. “She has agreed to be of great help to us all. I would be unwise to act against her wishes.”

Maybe there’s a plan, and maybe there isn’t. Either way, Yaz hasn’t been made aware of it, just like she never is, lately, and maybe that’s the reason the next words burn their way out of her throat, unease and indignation lit like a gas.

“If you let me leave, she’ll never do a single thing you ask of her, ever again.” Yaz knows this with a burning certainty, though she doesn’t entirely know what to make of it. “Bet she didn’t tell you that bit. You want her to listen to you, you need me here.”

Severn stills. The men behind him shift, metal clanking. It’s not quite a show of threat. Yet.

“Is that so?” His gaze turns on the Doctor, less genial. “You assured me you were a being of your word.”

“I am,” the Doctor insists, reaching for Yaz again, barely looking at her, but Yaz steps out of her range, onto mildewed carpet. “ _Yaz_.”

“I’m not going.”

The Doctor glares at her, and there’s still a pleading edge, fear lurking just behind. Resignation now, too.

Yaz nearly smiles. For a moment, she’s won.

“Severn.” Melin interrupts, soft and anxious. “Severn, our son—”

He raises a hand and she quiets instantly, shuffling back into the shadows. There’s still not quite enough room in the back of Yaz’s head to feel sorry for her, but it’s a near thing.

“You presume to have more power in this situation than is warranted,” he warns, and the false warmth in his eyes finally drains away. “You’re not nearly as useful as you think you are.” His eyes glint. “But why offer yourself as leverage?”

“I don’t think you’d understand,” Yaz tells him honestly. “But I’m telling you, you need me.”

He gazes at her steadily. “Fair enough. Suppose I agree with you. Do you presume to negotiate with me, little mayfly?”

Yaz steps forward, the Doctor reaching for her skirt, a finger’s breadth behind her. So close she can feel warm breath on her neck.

“Oh, I presume.” She straightens. “If I’m the leverage, then you need me alive and well. And if you want her to do everything you want, then you’d better keep me happy. So I’m not your prisoner,” Yaz says, warming to the idea, to the audience. “I want to see her, whenever I want. _And_ ,” she tacks on, thinking like she thinks the Doctor would, remembering just for a moment the mystery, the adventure, “I want free reign to wander your city.”

“Such a thing is not so easily granted.” Severn’s eyes glint dangerously.

“You’re in charge,” Yaz counters. She smiles, swallowing back her heart pounding in her throat, the Doctor’s displeasure prickling the hair on her neck. “Aren’t you? I’m sure you could make arrangements.”

Severn glowers. “Suppose I grant you this freedom, in exchange for the Doctor’s cooperation. Be warned that any meddling in our affairs will void the agreement. Any attempt to free the Doctor from her obligation towards us will void the agreement.” He looks her in the eye, steely grey and cold as hell. “Any attempt to leave the island will void the agreement. If you stay here, you stay as one of our citizens. Bound by our rules and our laws, subject to my authority. If you stay here, you stay forever. Until you die, little mayfly.”

“Yaz,” the Doctor hisses, furious.

“Fine,’ Yaz breathes. Seals her fate, but maybe not. Hopefully not. Talk your way in, and then talk your way out later, that’s how the Doctor always does it. That’s how the Doctor would do it, if she weren’t busy being someone else, _something_ else.

Her moment in the spotlight over, Severn’s gaze washes over her to settle on the Doctor behind her. _Little mayfly_. Underestimating her, but that’s another trick she’s learned from the Doctor. Never let them see how clever you are until it’s too late. She can play the game, for a while. Assess the situation, like she’s been taught, gather as much information as she can. She can do this right.

She doesn’t have a choice.

“Our agreement is fulfilled,” Severn tells the Doctor, tone broking no argument. Yaz forgotten, barely worth a breath or a thought. “Now, please, my friend. Time grows short. Attend my son.”

The air between them is still full of static. Yaz shifts out of the way, and out of the corner of her eye the Doctor’s jaw is tight and her shoulders are rigid—but she nods stiffly. When Severn glances away, she pins Yaz with a glare that promises the conversation on their end is far from over.

Severn snaps his fingers, and from the shadows behind him a nursemaid, bonneted and ancient, peels herself from the wall. The bundle in her arms is cradled in cragged, wrinkled hands. Yaz can’t help the breath that escapes her as she catches sight of its pallid face. Grey-cheeked, blue-lipped. Half-dead. Sympathy for monsters clambers up her throat.

Melin escapes the shadows of the wall for a moment, stepping forward, too-big eyes wide in her waifish face. A soldier presses a hand to stop her coming any closer. No one seems to care enough to pull Yaz away, though, so she stays near as the nursemaid places the baby in the Doctor’s careful grasp.

The Doctor’s face softens down at it. It’s not a motherly glance. Yaz isn’t sure what it is, or what it means—or what happens next. The Doctor draws in a breath, as if to sigh, and breathes out spun gold. Catches it on her fingers and presses it to the baby’s head like a kiss.

Seconds pass by, sticky. Silence, but for the distant crash of the waves against the rocks outside, the steady dripping of sea water into the cavern.

Melin’s son begins to cry.

The nursemaid springs into action that belies her age. Yaz only catches the briefest glimpse of pink cheeks before the baby is bundled away, out of the Doctor’s hands, but kept out of Melin’s, too. She trails the procession of nursemaid and armoured men up the stairs, throwing a brief glance behind her. Grateful, maybe. Or guilty. Either way, her eyes meet Yaz’s own, just for a moment.

Only Severn is left behind.

“Thank you,” he whispers, hands clasping behind his back. “Truly.”

The Doctor only looks at him, hands listless at her side. Her dark, wet gaze tracks him as he makes for the stairs.

“Knock when you want to leave,” he tells Yaz mildly. She’s of no consequence to him any longer, except as a tool. She leans into the part and averts her gaze, until the sound of his footsteps disappears, until there’s only the distant sea wailing at the wall. Until it’s just the two of them.

Yaz breaks the silence first.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” she says, and when she glances up the Doctor is already turning away, shutting her out. She makes her way wearily back to the rotted-out armchair and sits with her elbows resting on her knees. Jaw set.

Yaz stays where she is. Just this once, she’d like to be taller. “I mean it,” she tries again. “I’ve never seen you do that before. What was it?”

The Doctor wrinkles her nose, the way she does when she’s thinking up half-truths.

“I deserve to know.” Yaz interrupts her before she can finish. “Whatever it was, you did it to me too.”

That gives her pause. Another win. _Gold star_ , Yaz thinks, gut churning. _Five points to Yaz_.

“Time Lord trick,” she says eventually, like pulling teeth. “Like at Lake Geneva.”

“You’ve never done it before.”

“No.”

“Why?”

Her lips press together unhappily. Too many questions. Well, tough. Yaz isn’t done yet, not by a mile. And there are no distractions here, nothing to tinker with, no levers to pull or alarms to set off. Only the two of them and the sea, held at bay.

“Could you always do it?” Yaz presses, and the unease lingering in her gut finally settles on a name, and that name is _Grace_. She doesn’t say it out loud, but something of what she’s thinking must pass over her face. Or maybe it gets plucked from her head, coaxed out from behind her teeth.

The Doctor—statue-like in the chair she’s claimed, and the stillness means something that Yaz doesn’t have enough context to understand—flexes the hand resting on her knee.

“You should go back to the TARDIS,” she says. “You’d have to sneak back now, ‘course, but you could do it.”

“Only if you’re comin’ with me.”

“I didn’t bring you along so you could do the opposite of everything I say,” she spits.

Yaz crosses her arms. “Didn’t you?”

“How do you know that me sending you back to the TARDIS wasn’t part of a plan?”

“Because there’s never a plan.” Yaz lets her arms drop. She swallows once, uncomfortably. “And even if there was, you wouldn’t tell me.”

The Doctor frowns. “Yes, I would.”

“You never tell me anything.”

“I tell you all sorts of things.”

“Nothing that matters.” This time, it’s Yaz who glances away. “If you could do this the whole time,” she ventures quietly, still stuck on Grace. Stuck on Eve, stuck on all the people they’d met but hadn’t been able to save. “Why didn’t you, before?” She frowns. “And why do it now?”

Silence. Yaz listens to the distant sea roar for a moment, before her impatience gets the better of her. She gives up the advantage, kneels with her pristine night dress in rotting carpet for the chance to see the Doctor’s face. There are shadows there. There always are, lately.

The Doctor avoids her eyes, still. Maybe she’s thinking of Grace, too. “Are you angry?” she asks, and the sound is mild, but Yaz knows the answer is important.

“No,” she says, truthfully. “I’m just confused.” She bunches the fabric of her dress in her fists, thinking her way through. “That other Time Lord, he died.”

The Doctor raises her eyebrows in agreement.

“Severn said he was here a few hundred years. But you told us you were thousands of years old, so unless he was ancient already,” she says, approaching the truth, and not especially liking it, “then, well.” She shudders, against the damp. “Doctor, did it kill him? Whatever you can do, did it kill him?”

The Doctor purses her lips, which is acknowledgement enough. She tilts her head, searching for a better answer, but Yaz is already reeling upwards, skirt falling to her feet, unease crawling up her throat.

“Yes,” the Doctor admits finally, grimacing. She glances up, hair shifting. Guileless. “Don’t worry, though, Yaz,” she says, and the grimace twists into what’s not quite a smile. “It won’t kill me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> slow and steady wins the race right? fdjghkdfg lmao I'm juggling a few stories (and a few other Secret Wips)(um and also the same quasi-apocalypse as everyone is right now rip) at the moment, but I do have plans to wrap them all up, so thanks for being so patient! In the meantime, I bring more offerings of,,,,,uh whatever this is,,,,,,,,tbh I'm still unclear on that front, but thank you very much for reading, and I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Hope you're all safe and well, and I'd love to hear what you thought <3


	3. iii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MIND THE SPOILERS FOR THE SPECIAL I AM VIBRATINGGGGGGG

Therest of the day drips by. He’d told her to knock when she wanted to leave, but she doesn’t want to leave. Instead, she stays with the Doctor in their brine-soaked tomb.A rotting, canopied bed is tucked behind the water-logged bookshelves and the mildewing rug. Salt crystals climb up the wood, have settled in the cracks like gems. Yaz examines them carefully while the Doctor rifles through moldy book after moldy book. Each eventually comes to rest in a growing pile behind her, when she inevitable throws them over her shoulder.

“Useless,” she mutters, tossing another one behind her. “Boring.” Another. “Read it.” She pauses. “Now _that’s_ interesting.”

Yaz tears her gaze away from the salt.

“Good interesting or bad interesting?”

The Doctor won’t say anything further on the matter of regeneration. Nor the Time Lords, though that’s nothing especially new. She doesn’t snap so much, anymore, but she still ducks and weaves between every question with a smile. Yaz knows better than to push too far, these days. She’ll just have to keep chipping away, day by day, minute by minute. Sometimes, it’s better to just go along—and wait.

The Doctor doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, she presses her nose further into the rotting pages of the book she’s just rescued from the shelf and saved from the pile behind her.

“Stolen,” she says, grinning. Yaz catches a glint of white teeth in the gloom. “And not from just anywhere. This looks like it might have been nicked from the bookshelf of Rassilon themself.”

“Rassilon?”

Strained. “No one important.”

The lie is as obvious as the grimace on her face.

“Someone important,” Yaz counters, abandoning the bed, slowly being consumed by the elements. She steps closer, unashamedly nosy. “If they had a bookshelf worth nicking off.”

The Doctor concedes this point with a wrinkled nose, still absorbed by the book.

“Well, it’s no _Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey_ ,” she muses, squinting. “But it’s not the sort of thing they would have let you walk off the planet with. I wonder—” And her nimble hands slip to the front of the book, where a signature in impossible circles is scrawled, vandalizing the weathered pages. A smile cracks her face, just as weathered. “Ambrosius Aurelius,” she reads.

“But that sounds like an Earth name.”

“It’s a name he took,” the Doctor says. “Like mine. He must have been an exile.”

There’s a reverence she gifts the word. A brittleness, too. “Like you,” Yaz hedges, and more pieces slot into place. It makes perfect sense, of course, in retrospect.

No reply. But then, Yaz doesn’t expect one. Gallifrey is off-limits, as far as conversational topics go. The Doctor closes the book. The cover rests tenderly under her palm.

“What’s it about, then?“ she presses, more gently. “The book.”

The Doctor frowns, warming to the more comfortable territory. “Not entirely sure yet,” she admits. “It’s written in Old High Gallifreyan.”

“And?”

“I’m _rusty_.”

“Better get reading, then.” A yawn swallows the end of the word, too quickly for Yaz to smother it. The Doctor doesn’t look up from the book, but the line of her mouth sharpens.

“You should rest,” she says.

“So should you,” Yaz counters.

“Thought I had reading to do?”

“You know what I meant.”

The truth is, Yaz is tired. It’s a strange exhaustion, though, tinged with what almost feels like mania. She’s so tired she could stay awake for days. The feeling sits scratchy behind her eyes. The reasonable thing to do would be to sleep until it’s gone.

She eyes the moldering bed with distaste. Without looking up from the book, the Doctor shucks off her coat and hands it to her absently.

“Here,” she says quietly. “There’s console grease on the sleeve, mind. Not sure it’s all that much better than whatever’s covering that bed.”

Yaz takes it, the fabric still faintly warm with residual heat. Not a lot, of course. The Doctor runs cold. Colder than her, anyway. But she wraps it around herself like a blanket, anyway. Protection, from the elements encroaching on their subterranean prison.

There’s so much more she could say, but she doesn’t even know where to begin. She leaves the Doctor to her book, a sallow, green-tinged silhouette in the gloom, and lowers herself gingerly onto the brine-soaked sheets.

The Doctor’s coat smells faintly of chamomile and engine oil. Before too long, the scratchiness behind her eyes carries her away.

She dreams of an island of coral and rock, growing out of the sea. An old man is hunched down by the cragged shore, a walking stick in hand, swathed in scratchy fabric. He doesn’t turn to look at her, so Yaz scrambles down the outcrop of strange, sharp growth. The ground thrums beneath her hand. The wind whistles through the porous holes in the corals, wheezes through the air, a prolonged groan. Like something nearly alive.

Her trainers catch and trip in the treacherous landscape, but she persists. She makes her way painstakingly, until she reaches the lip where the sea meets the land. Salt sprays into her face. Far above her, she watches gulls cry, circling above them in patterns.

The old man is white-haired, bearded. Freckles and sun-spots are smattered across his dark face, the sun glinting in his eyes. There’s something sad in the slump of his shoulders. There’s something kind in the twinkle of his eyes. He feels like a friend she hasn’t met.

“Do you know the question yet?” he asks her mildly.

Then, of course, she wakes.

There’s no light to trickle down into their tomb, but something tells her its morning, anyway. Brine fills her nose. The Doctor is cross-legged beside her, hunched over, nose still pressed into last night’s book. Suspenders down around her waist, strangely naked without her coat. Her fingers turn the pages gently. They peel away with a fragile, wet sound.

Yaz’s throat is dry, though the scratchiness behind her eyes is gone. It occurs to her that they’ve been left no water, no food.

“Biscuits in the pocket,” the Doctor says, unprompted. “Might find a cuppa or two, as well. If you’re lucky.”

Barely awake enough to parse the sentence, and certainly not awake enough yet to question it, Yaz fumbles for the pockets of the Doctor’s coat, still wrapped protectively around her shoulders. Sure enough, her fingers find two custard creams. She passes one to the Doctor without another thought. They munch quietly together, in silence.

“What did you find out, then?” Yaz wonders, breaking through the sound of the sea, just beyond them. “While you were reading.”

The Doctor’s still far too motionless. Still like she used to only get when she thought no one was watching. She doesn’t seem to care as much, anymore. Or maybe it’s just that she doesn’t notice.

“Ambrosius Aurelius,” she says softly, closing the book with care. “A Time Lord. Prydonian chapter. Early days, though. He doesn’t talk much about himself, but he’s scrawled little notes everywhere, in the margins.”

“And the book?”

Her face might as well be carved from marble, for all Yaz can divine from it.

“It’s old,” she allows. “Ancient, even. And a secret, I think. From Rassilon’s personal, private collection. Stealing it would have been a capital crime.” She doesn’t seem alarmed by the words coming out of her mouth, though they chill Yaz to the bone. The more she learns about the Doctor’s blistered, burning home, the more she fears it. “He would have been erased from the universe, if they’d caught him. Removed from the timeline.”

Yaz suppresses a shudder. “Must be quite something, inside.”

“He was a heretic.” Typically, for the Doctor, there’s a note of admiration in her voice. And a touch of something stranger. “What’s inside this book, no one would—” Her voice catches. “No one would believe it. He must have known that. So he stole it and left, instead.”

Yaz feels her brow pull into a frown. She shifts, burrowing deeper into the Doctor’s coat. “What was he doing here, then?”

The Doctor’s eyes are far away. “I don’t know,” she says, but it tastes like a lie. “Running away, at least to start. That’s how it always starts.”

It’s always more questions than answers, lately. Or always.

“And what about you, then?” Yaz presses. “What are you doing here? What are _we_ doing here?”

The mention turns her gaze slightly flinty again. “If you’d done what I asked—”

“Then there’d be no one here to help you,” Yaz says firmly. When the Doctor’s steely expression doesn’t budge, she takes the sleeve of her jumper, the fabric damp and miserable under her fingers. “I spent a long time,” she breathes, “thinking you were dead, and hoping you weren’t. It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. So I’m not,” and her fingers tighten around her sleeve, “letting it happen again.”

As always, the Doctor doesn’t seem especially reassured by her promise. Her lips press together unhappily. The memory of the alley in Hong Kong flares in her mind’s eye, drenched in sodium lights. The cold rush of confidence that had flooded her veins, despite everything. The _certainty_.

“Yaz,” the Doctor starts, but the creak of the door opening at the top of the stairs echoes down, thunders against the damp stone. Whatever she might have said gets swallowed back. “Be careful,” she says instead, tucking the book behind a mildewing pillow as she stands. She still cuts an oddly forlorn figure, without her coat. Yaz makes to hand it back, but the Doctor shakes her head. “Keep it. I don’t get cold.”

Much like _‘I don’t need to sleep’_ , the phrase strikes Yaz as a half-truth, if not an outright lie, but she doesn’t protest. Much.

“Why wear a coat, then?” she asks quietly. The Doctor only gazes at her, drinking her in silently, until her attention is pulled with reluctance to the armoured guards that fill the room expectantly. She follows them up without a backward glance.

The gloom is so pronounced that for a moment, Yaz doesn’t even notice that Melin has slipped in behind them, lingering nervously by the door. Her watery gaze meets Yaz’s from across the room.

“We could break fast together,” she offers quietly, as Yaz approaches. “If you’d like. And I thought perhaps you’d want to borrow some clothes.”

What Yaz would _like_ is her jeans and jumper back, not to mention her jacket. But she holds the request behind her tongue, for now.

“Alright,” she says, taking Melin’s proffered arm, as they climb the steps together. The clamour of the armoured guards is far in the distance now. The two of them trace the same path as the day before, winding through tapestried halls, grand rugs, heavy curtains, back to the chamber Yaz first woke in.

“It’s for my lady-in-waiting,” Melin explains quietly, as they wind closer, climbing more familiar stairs. “Only I don’t have one, you see. You could sleep up here, if you’d like. I’m sorry I didn’t offer yesterday. I was—” She swallows. “I was so—”

“I’ll stay with the Doctor, thanks,” Yaz says firmly.

“The door to that room will always lock at the sun set,” is all Melin tells her in reply. “That is—I think you might find—”

She swallows the rest of the words back with a furtive glance, though there’s no one else in the narrow stairwell to hear.

“Makes it hard to investigate after dark,” Yaz finishes the thought for her, quietly. “Melin, are you trying to help me?”

Her wide eyes only dart away, but Yaz tucks a small smile away regardless. She doesn’t press, though. _For now_.

When they reach the top of the stairs, she sits with Melin on the pristine, canopied bed. They eat assorted fruits and bread from a silver tray. There’s more wine in a silver goblet that Yaz doesn’t touch. Melin’s son is nowhere to be found, but there’s a lightness to the slant of her shoulders that wasn’t there yesterday. An ease of posture.

“I wanted to thank you,” she says eventually, gaze still averted. “For my son.”

“It’s not me you have to thank,” Yaz points out. Melin keeps her eyes cast down, but her lips press together in acknowledgement. A piece of bread is slowly torn to shreds by her fingers.

“Speaking of,” Yaz says. “Where did they take the Doctor?” The reminder churns her stomach, unsettles the impatience she’s tried to smother. She eyes the stone skyline through the window, the sun rising slowly.

Melin abandons the bread to the tray.

“To perform more miracles, of course,” she says. “We can go watch, later. If you’d like.”

“Miracles.”

Now, Melin finally looks to her, eyes wide. “To make the sick and the dying well again. Like my son. Just like in the stories.”

Yaz meets her gaze steadily. ‘Why?” she asks.

Melin blinks. Her lips purse uncertainly.

“It’s the right thing to do.” Her thin, reedy voice has no backbone to it.

“No offense, but your husband doesn’t exactly strike me as the selfless type.”

Melin doesn’t disagree, but her lips whiten further. “He’s trying to help our people,” she insists.

“Your people,” Yaz presses, “but what about the rest of them? The rest of this planet? The universe?”

“Your Doctor is only one woman.”

“Exactly.” Yaz feels her voice grow tight. “And what about her, then? Have you thought about what’s right for her?”

The sun trickles slowly in through the window, paints cool light on the velvet canopy, Melin’s wheat-coloured hair.

“She _agreed_ ,” she says quietly.

 _She_ , Yaz doesn’t say, _isn’t thinking straight_.

“That don’t make it right, or fair.” Yaz leans forward, braid hanging. “I know what happened to the bloke that was here before her. I won’t let it happen to her. Even if I have to drag her kicking and screaming, past you all _and_ your swords. Understand?” Her breath lingers heavy in her throat. “I’ll do it myself, if I have to. But I’d rather do it with some help.”

For a moment, she worries she’s misjudged. That the hint of decency she’d found in the other woman is weaker than the fear she catches in the back of her eyes. Maybe Melin will abandon her at the top of the tower, run screaming for the guards, for her husband.

Instead, her face crumples. She hides her expression behind her curtain of hair.

“You should take her and run, right now,” she says. “Never mind the guards, never mind my husband. You should _leave_.”

“I said I’d drag her if I had to,” Yaz says quietly. “But I’d rather not. She’d never forgive me, I don’t think. Something tells me half what’s keeping her here is the mystery. If I can help solve it…”

Melin swallows. “Are you certain?”

“She’s only here because she doesn’t want to leave. Trust me, she could escape in a heartbeat, if she felt like it. I’ve seen it.”

The words don’t ring quite true, in the back of her throat. There’s a ten month abscess, in the space between her ribs.

Behind her curtain of hair, Melin’s brow crinkles into a frown. “Then why stay? If not only for this mystery, as you say.”

Yaz looks sideways, out to the city skyline, the sun shining through. The sea glints in the distance.

“I don’t know,” she admits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *banging pots and pans together* WELCOME BACK TO THASMIN HELL WHERE I WILL BE LIVING FOR THE NEXT LIKE TEN MONTHS and then also the rest of my life probably maybe
> 
> how about that special eh
> 
> thanks for reading please like comment and subscribe also HAPPY NEW YEAR BLESS U ALL


	4. iv.

Ransek glints like a weathered jewel in the morning sun. Melin lends her more skirts, more fabric to trip and fall on, and leads her outside, arm in arm. The central square of the risen city is bustling by the light of day, far more lively than it had been when they’d arrived. Yaz watches children flee across the cobbled stone, laughing gleefully. Horse-drawn carts full of produce and wares from outside are stationed in the middle of the square, awnings risen off their backs, offering shelter from the light and heat. The smells of salt and brine rise off the ground to reach her nose, evaporating in the sun. Carts of local fish line the edges, freshly caught. Sweet peddlers and flower merchants, at the fringes.

“Melin,” Yaz wonders quietly, the other woman’s hand sweaty around her elbow. She watches another child rush across the square, squealing in delight, a toy sword in hand. The question has been lingering in the back of her throat since the early morning. “Where’s your son?”

Melin doesn’t break her graceful stride, as she guides them around the edges of the square, a gentle smile fixed to her face. She nods to the odd passerby in stilted greeting.

“With the nursemaid,” she says quietly. “I’ll see him in the evening. I spend an hour every night.”

“Only an hour?” Yaz frowns. “But he’s your son.”

“It’s the way things are done here,” Melin says, swallowing. “He has to grow up without—without too much attachment to me. He has to be ready to take on his father’s burden.”

“And what about you?” she demands, mindful of the volume of her voice. The sea roars over the rest of her words. “What about your burden?”

Melin’s thin smile never wavers. “I’m just for decoration,” she whispers. “I have no voice. I have no wants. And I’m lucky,” she breathes, milky eyes catching Yaz’s own, glinting in the sun. “I _am_ ,” she insists, gesturing with her chin to a pair of thin, weathered women, leaning out poorly thatched windows to hang clothes to a dripping line. “I was like them, before,” she says quietly. “I had nothing. No future, no prospects. But Severn chose me for a bride. _Me_ ,” she whispers, like she still can’t believe it. “Out of the whole city, he chose me. I had nothing, and he gave me everything. A comfortable life.” Her eyes flit away from Yaz’s own. “And if I’m even luckier,” she says mildly, “an eternal one.”

“Is that what he’s promised?” Yaz says. “Is that what he’s promised all of you? Eternal life? I don’t think even the Doctor can give you that. And even if she could,” she says, unease prickling the back of her neck. “I don’t think it’s something anyone would want. Not really.”

“You don’t want to live forever?”

“No,” Yaz insists. “Life has meaning ‘cos eventually it ends. Living forever would be like—“ She nearly shudders to a halt, but Melin’s fingers are still wrapped around her arm like a vise. Ten months still ache between her ribs. _Do it right this time_ , her sister whispers in her ear. “I don’t know,” she says quietly. “But it’s not natural, Melin. It’s not right.”

Melin glances away, at the children running in the square.

“Maybe,” is all she says, and leads them deeper into the shadows of the city proper. Stone towers overhead, narrow streets, salt-laden wind funnelled down the corridors. Past the clocktower, the bell inside ringing clearly, three strident chimes. The sun like an eye, glinting occasionally between the buildings. Everything seems so normal. Normal and—boring. If she didn’t know the truth, if she hadn’t had steel rammed between her ribs for her trouble, it might be hard to believe that the city is built overtop of so many secrets.

“Did people know?” she asks, as they approach a tall, spindly building that reaches towards the sky. Arcing, aching lines, like a mosque or a cathedral. Another glimpse of what’s left of humanity, through the glass. “About the man from before. The wizard.”

“They knew him as a healer,” Melin whispers, eyeing the building warily as they approach. There’s a crowd sprawled at the steps, swarmed delicately around figures Yaz can’t yet make out. “A teacher. A sooth-sayer, sometimes. They say he always knew when a storm was coming,” she breathes. “But only a few knew about his true gifts. He only granted eternal life to a select few. To the worthy.”

Yaz shakes her head. “Impossible,” she says. “If he really did grant eternal life, then where are the people who never died?”

Melin swallows nervously. “I’m not to know,” she whispers. “My husband—“

She stills, fingers whitening around Yaz’s arm. The throng ahead of them filters into the mouth of the towering building, away from the sun.

“We can go in and watch,” she says. “But we can’t interfere. You understand?”

Yaz grits her teeth. “I understand.”

They file in on the heels of the dwindling crowd. The building—a city hall, maybe, Yaz wonders, eyes following the lines of it up, up—is dark and musty, light trickling weakly in through thin, tall, towering windows. Is there religion, on Ransek? Inside the building there are no idols, no prayer mats, no altars. Only dark wood and stone and salt-weathered tapestries draping the walls. The weak sunlight casts down in criss-crossed patterns on the crowd below.

On Severn, at the centre. The Doctor, a grim-faced shadow beside him.

Yaz and Melin settle in at the back, unobtrusively. The bell still ringing outside calms. The roar of the sea is harder to hear, from the shelter of inside, cocooned away from the salt and the sun. Severn raises a single hand, and the crowd stills.

“My friends,” he says, at a level volume. There’s no need for him to shout—the crowd is so silent, a pin could drop and Yaz is certain she would be able to hear it. “My dear friends,” he says, warmly. “I’m so sorry to gather you at such short notice.”

“This is highly irregular,” a voice from the front agrees. Yaz catches a glimpse of a green, velveted hat, but the rest of the figure is obscured by the crowd. “To ring the bells with no warning. There are no council meetings scheduled for the next moon and a half.”

“This is not a council matter, Chancellor,” Severn says smoothly. His hands raise to placate the murmurs that follow. “Nor is it an emergency,” he reassures, still warm, still smiling. “I bring good tidings to us all.”

“A woman in trousers,” another voice interjects.

“Is this the fashion now, Governor?”

A small amount of jeering follows, quieted only by Severn’s raised hand. The Doctor casts a withering look forward into the wall, unimpressed.

“Good tidings,” Severn persists, “that I will share with you all. Even you, Councillor Geft.” A smattering of laughter. “Many of you are young enough still to remember my father’s faithful companion and advisor. We have been in poor health, all of us, since he left us. Our home has become a barren, rocky wasteland once more, like it was during the dark times of old. Since the fracture, since his death, we have again become a kingdom of rocks and brine and sickness.” He places a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. Yaz watches her nose wrinkle slightly in distaste. “I have brought a doctor to heal us all.”

“What nonsense!” Councillor Geft, Yaz assumes. And his friend in the green hat, muttering unhappily alongside. “The city’s elites have had quite enough of your deceptions, Lord Governor. Look outside, why don’t you? We prosper!”

“No deception!” he cries, striding forward, fingers clamped to the Doctor’s shoulder. “Show them, my friend,” he implores of her. “Show them what I mean. Bring forth the ill!” he cries. “The injured, the unwell!”

The Doctor’s nose wrinkles further, clearly unhappy with the pageantry. But she steps forward slightly, eyebrows raised, and a thin, ragged woman with a thin, ragged child at her hip steps forward tentatively.

It’s always, Yaz thinks tiredly, the children.

The Doctor touches them both without hesitation, fingers gently brushing their faces, trailing gold like dust in the air. It catches in the thin sunlight, illuminates the musty interior of the hall, the shadows of the ragged woman’s cavernous face. In the aftermath, she stands straighter. Yaz catches a glimpse of her rosied cheeks, sees her breathe in, surprised. The child at her hip squirms, no longer limp.

The crowd erupts. Through the chaos, Yaz watches the Doctor lean in, lips moving soundlessly. Asking for a name, Yaz imagines. She fishes in her trouser pockets and emerges with a colourful handkerchief that she spirits from behind the child’s ear and leaves in his clenched fist. She backs away, when the woman tries to kiss her hand. There’s an anger lurking in the line of her jaw, if you know to look for it.

“You see,” Severn booms above the sudden din of the crowd. His detractors are silent. “Good tidings,” he says again, holding up a hand to still the shifting throng, the ill and infirm struggling to the front. “For all of us,” he says, the golden buttons of his suit glinting in the light. “Every one of us. You remember my grandfather,” he breathes, in the sudden quiet. His head jerks briefly to the left, where a tattered tapestry hangs high on the wall. “Septus the Third. A great ruler, in his own right, before his kingdom was overthrown.” There’s not a hint of dissatisfaction that glints past his eyes, but Yaz catches some in the turn of his mouth. “His father was also a great king. And his father’s father, Septus the First, brought light and hope to this barren, rocky wasteland. I know you are hungry,” he breathes. “I know you are tired. I know your hands are worked to the bone. I know that the riches and wealth severed from our lands of old are still a loss to you. You deserve better. You deserve more. You deserve to be healthy, whole, hopeful. Today,” he says, eyes shining, “I bring forth that hope once again.”

He places a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder again, where she stands at his side, like a silhouette or a statue. Motionless. Unreadable, but for the wrinkle that remains branded in the centre of her forehead.

“After all, what is a king without a wizard?” he asks of the crowd, smiling, and at his words they burst into noise and merriment once more. Yaz presses closer to Melin, wincing away from the joyfulness of the mob, the fervour of their shouts. The Doctor’s shape soon consumed by their shadows.

“I thought he was the governor,” she whispers.

“He is,” Melin agrees. She glances furtively towards the front of the hall. “But his family ruled for centuries, before the fracture.”

“Fracture?”

Melins swallows. “Before I was born. Our—“ She tests the word out on her tongue, as though not entirely certain how to use it. “Our _planet_ was an entire kingdom, once. Or—or the parts we live on, the parts we can reach. We were one people, once. But the people of the villages and marshes and fields grew angry at the city. They weren’t allowed in, you see. The city took their crops and their produce and their animals, all of their wealth, and gave nothing back. Their anger grew and grew with each king,” she whispers. “Until one day it all boiled over and the kingdom fractured. The poor of the city rose up with them, demanded representation, proper governance. There was a war that lasted ten years. The king lost. And now my husband governs a city-state,” she says, with a tired smile. “But he has the blood of kingdoms in him. He talks of it often, those old days. I think his father did as well. He was ashamed, you see, that his father had allowed it all to be taken from him.”

“Didn’t his wizard help him?” Yaz wonders dryly.

“I think his wizard tried,” Melin answers seriously. “But he was old and frail by the time of the uprising. And—“ She glances again towards her husband, now moving into the crowd, guiding the Doctor like a dog on a leash, the glow of her hands occasionally illuminating the depths of the hall. “Well, I don’t know,” she admits. “But I’ve heard stories.”

“What sort of stories?” Yaz asks, searching for her in the crowd.

“Stories of his kindness,” Melin says wistfully, eyes fixed to her husband. “He loved his king, but he didn’t want to fight. He only wanted to help.”

“Yeah,” Yaz breathes. The Doctor is only a silhouette in the midst of a mob. She swallows uneasily. “Think I know someone like that.”

Night blankets the city, before long. Yaz watches the sun dip slowly below the horizon from another uncomfortable dining chair. The windows in Severn’s dining hall are tall and narrow, swathed in velvet, facing the sea.

Melin sits across from her, frail and silent again in the shadow of her husband. The Doctor is a stone statue beside her, still as a monument. She doesn’t even pretend to move the food around on her plate.

It’s some kind of game, simmered and stewed. When Yaz glances to her in silent askance, she shakes her head apologetically. Yaz fishes around it for a vegetable without much hope, glances with mild despair at the wine in the goblet in front of her. This place isn’t remotely designed for her.

“Is it not to your liking?” Melin wonders softly, looking at her with concern.

Yaz shakes her head, mindful of Severn’s watchful gaze at the top of the table. “I’m sure it’s lovely,” she reassures. “It’s just—I don’t eat meat like this. Or drink alcohol. It’s part of my beliefs.”

For a moment, the other woman only looks at her, puzzled. “Oh,” she says, sympathetically, though the confusion remains. No religion on Ransek, then, Yaz notes. Or at least not like she understands it. “I’m so sorry,” Melin says, regardless. She smiles, secretively. “I’ll talk to the cook.”

Yaz sits back, faintly touched.

“Thanks,” she says.

The Doctor doesn’t move, but she glances between them, curious. Her coat is still draped in Yaz’s lap. Without it, she cuts an unfamiliar silhouette.

“And what about—?” Melin wonders, eyes trailing to the Doctor and her untouched cup. She glances furtively towards her husband.

“Not human,” the Doctor answers easily, smiling. “Don’t need to worry about me.”

Melin nods, uneasily. The tension simmering in the room only grows.

“We must all keep up our strength,” Severn says, mild. He shares a glance with the Doctor that Yaz doesn’t understand.

“Yes,” the Doctor replies. She doesn’t pick up her fork. “It must be a hard job,” she continues, unreadable. There’s a hint of scorn in the arch of her eyebrows, but it’s a subtle, subtle thing. “Looking after all these people.”

“It is a burden I bear gladly.”

“Oh, yeah, of course.” Her face scrunches up in acknowledgement. “I suppose it’s been in the family for centuries, though, hasn’t it. Your burden. This city.”

It’s not a question. Severn takes a sip of wine, unalarmed. “My grandfather was king, it’s true. And my father aided in the passage of power, when the kingdom failed. But don’t make the mistake of assuming my position was handed to me. I worked for what I have,” he says simply. “I was raised by my father to serve the public, as is befitting the new structure that was demanded of us. No king above it all,” he says, smiling pleasantly. “A governor, to guide. A council, to confer the wants and wishes of the people, and to make arrangements for trade and commerce with the other states. It’s a much fairer arrangement.”

“And yet your city elites still have all the power,” the Doctor says sharply. “And your poor are no more wealthy.”

“Such is the way of things,” he says with no pity. “I can’t change their nature. But they still deserve our help,” he breathes, leaning forward over his plate. “Don’t they, Doctor?”

The Doctor meets his gaze unflinchingly.

“Yeah,” she says eventually, breath hitching. “Yeah, I reckon they do.”

He beams. “Excellent. Then we are in agreement, my dear friend.” He raises his glass to toast. The Doctor’s hands stay clenched in her lap. The table falls back into stilted, velvety silence, while what’s left of the sun slinks down beneath the sea.

Eventually, Melin slips away—to spend time with her son, Yaz thinks, an odd kind of sympathy still pressing up against her heart. Yaz sticks to the Doctor’s side as they make their way back down into the depths of the chamber underneath Severn’s home, mindful of the guards at their backs, forever clanking. Severn lingers in the doorway, a tall, broad-shouldered shadow. Yaz thinks, briefly, of the silhouetted kings captured in the tapestries she’d seen earlier. The looming, shadowed shape of them.

“Staying the night again, little mayfly?” he asks her. It’s just on the edge of taunting, and her skin bristles with it.

“Yeah,” she says firmly, meeting his gaze. His eyes are cool and clear and not impressed by her in the slightest. He’s underestimated her from the start. She vows then to make him regret it. “Something called loyalty. Not that I’d expect you to understand.”

“I understand more than you think,” he says mildly, still amused. “Sweet dreams to you, then.” His gaze passes over her to land on the Doctor. “Rest well, my friend. Everything is proceeding as planned.”

The Doctor’s eyebrows raise in mocking agreement, though maybe he can’t tell. He slips away without another word, and the door bangs shut behind him. The eerie light from the gas lamps throw everything green and murky, in the final absence of the light from the hallway. Maybe it’s not gas after all, Yaz wonders, eyeing one of the lamps speculatively. There’s something nearly phosphorescent about it, about the lights in the city, too. Bright and glowing. Almost like something alive. She has half a mind to ask the Doctor about it—

But when she turns from the door, she’s already fishing for the book she’d tucked under the pillow earlier, pressing open the pages gently.

Yaz crosses her arms.

“Doctor,” she says. “You know, there is a chair, about a foot to your left.”

“Sitting’s for boring people,” she mutters, turning a page carefully, hair dangling in front of her eyes. But she tears her gaze away a moment later, registering. “Everything alright?”

 _Hell of a question_ , she almost says, but she tucks it away behind her teeth. Something of her hesitation must show on her face, because the Doctor presses forward a step, book still in hand.

“Don’t worry,” she reassures, eyes glinting. It’s almost believable. “Really, Yaz. We’ll be out of here in no time. D’you want another biscuit? Sorry,” she breathes, words running into each other. “About supper, I mean.” She tilts her head curiously at the reminder, pulled in about seventeen different directions, as usual. “You and Severn’s wife—“

“It’s fine,” Yaz says. “I mean, it’s nothing new. And she’s—she showed me around, today.” _She’s a prisoner here too_ , she doesn’t say. “She could be useful.”

The Doctor nods, eyebrows raising again in faint agreement. That strange, familiar silence seeps in again, to fill the space between them. “Well,” she tries.

“You didn’t have any supper either,” Yaz interrupts. “Shouldn’t you at least drink something?”

The Doctor’s mouth presses into a thin line. Her fingertips whiten against the edge of the book.

“Sedatives,” she says. “In the wine. Yours too, I’d reckon. Be careful of what they give you. There should be plenty of snacks in my coat pockets, if you need. Hopefully. Probably.” For a moment, her shoulder slump. “I should’ve brought my bum bag,” she mutters despairingly to herself, shaking her head. “Stupid Doctor. It’s full of snacks.”

Yaz’s brow wrinkles. “Sedatives? What for?”

The Doctor shrugs, the bum bag forgotten. “Why not?” She treads to the moldering armchair and sprawls in it haphazardly, feet swinging up around the arms. It’s almost a familiar sight. The book gets raised above her, fingers turning another delicate page. “Anything that makes it hard for us to think,” she says, more to herself, “is good for him. It’s probably from the same playbook they used on the first guy.”

“But you noticed,” Yaz ventures. “Wouldn’t he have as well?”

“Not if he was expecting them to be kind,” the Doctor says simply, already engrossed again. “And,” she turns another page, “I’m not sure he was the most observant person this side of the galaxy. His notes are—“ She turns the book upside down, squinting at it in frustration. “Well, they’re a bit of a mess.”

“A mess,” Yaz says dryly, giving up against the chill and wrapping herself in the Doctor’s coat. “Imagine that.”

Her feet squelch across the mildewing carpet. The bed squeaks and groans when she perches on the end of it, watching the Doctor read.

“You’re not just going along, then,” she says quietly, relieved and disturbed in turn by the Doctor’s clear fixation on what Aurelius left behind. “You don’t really—I mean, you’re not really—“

The Doctor peers at her over the top of the book.

“Not really what?”

Yaz just stares at her. Her face is guileless, but Yaz knows her well enough by now to know there’s plenty of guile, if you know where to look.

Maybe it’s just that she doesn’t know where to look.

“You never said.” She crosses her arms again, the fabric of the Doctor’s coat silky under her touch. “The other night. You never said what we’re doing here. You’re not really gonna help them,” she asks. “Help him. Are you?”

Impenetrable. The Doctor’s eyes return to her book, which she flips right-side up again.

“Nothing wrong with helping,” she says mildly. Yaz sits back, feeling distinctly judged. “That’s what we do, isn’t it? Help people.”

“Yeah, but not _him_ ,” she protests. “Doctor, he—“

“ _He_ isn’t who I’m helping,” the Doctor says steadily, not even bothering to look at her anymore. “He’s not the children, or their starving mothers, or their dying fathers. What do you want me to do?” She says it breezily, like the answer is simple, like it’s barely worth talking about, but there’s something tight in her jaw, still. “Just let it all be? Hop in the TARDIS and leave? Leave the mystery alone, let these people die?”

“You’ve never helped like this before,” Yaz says. “This isn’t what we _do_.”

The Doctor stiffens. There’s something strange in the sharp curve of her lip. “Why couldn’t it be?” she asks, a bit breathlessly. “Why shouldn’t it be? I have something to give, why shouldn’t I give it?”

“You’re not giving it,” Yaz insists. “They’re _taking_ it. It’s different.”

Another page of the book turns with a quiet rustle. “I’m just playing along,” the Doctor says, but the words are a hair short of patronizing. She’s lying, Yaz thinks, frustration burning a hole in her heart. If not to Yaz, then to herself. “You should play along too, Yaz.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes.”

“As long as _what_ takes?” she demands, sweeping to her feet.

The Doctor swallows tightly. She still won’t look at her. “I’m trying to figure this place out,” she says finally. “I just need—I need—“

“Oh,” and now the anger’s swept her away, she can’t quite keep hold of what’s coming out her mouth, “and how is all that working for you? How much are you figuring out, from here? Behind a locked door?” Her breath rattles in her throat. The Doctor has gone very, very still. “If I wasn’t here—“

“Then I’d have no one else to worry about,” she interrupts coldly, looking faintly surprised at herself. She closes her mouth gingerly, looking chagrined.

Yaz steps back, stung. The edge of the bed digs into the back of her knees.

“You don’t mean that,” she shoots back, hurt. “I’ve seen what you’re like, without us. You can’t stand being on your own. You don’t—you can’t—“

The Doctor still won’t look at her, but something that’s not quite a laugh gets strangled in her throat. “You have no idea what I’m like without you,” she says breathlessly. “And you have no idea—“

She swallows.

“So tell me,” Yaz breathes. “Just—just _tell me_.”

She doesn’t shake her head, but her neck twists, and her nose disappears into Aurelius’ notes. Conversation over. Yaz watches the unhappy line of her shoulders, nose wrinkled, missing Ryan and Graham like an ache.

The sea roars, muffled behind brine-soaked walls. It’s a terrible place to sleep, all things considered. A terrible place to live.

A terrible place to die, Yaz thinks grimly, settling herself gingerly on the bed. The rotting canopy dangles above her like a shroud.

“You used to like it,” she breathes, eyes closing reluctantly. “When I asked loads of questions.”

She opens her eyes to the same island again, coral sharp against her feet, gulls crying overhead. The same withered, weathered man is sitting at the shore, a fishing rod in hand.

The sea laps gently at the end of his fishing line. He’ll never catch anything in water this shallow, Yaz finds herself thinking.

“It’s you,” she says, without thinking. “Ambrosius Aurelius. Isn’t it?”

“What’s left of me,” he admits with a smile, eyes fixed on the water.

“Am I just dreaming you?” she wonders. “Or are you really here?”

“A dream is never just,” he says.

“But how can you be here,” she says, scrabbling carefully down the outcrops of coral to join him, “if you’re dead?”

Salt breeze brushes her hair away from her face.

“Dead isn’t the same as gone,” he says. And for a while, he says nothing more, so Yaz sits gingerly down beside him and watches him fish. The same gulls circle overhead. The same waves lap against the shore. It’s perfectly peaceful, but something about the sameness of it all grates against her. It’s peace by way of a computer simulation. Peace by way of perfection, which means it can’t possibly be real.

“The Doctor said you were a heretic,” she says eventually, when she can’t stand the peace any longer. “An exile.”

“The Doctor,” he says, with a cragged smile. “Is that what she calls herself?”

“It’s her name,” Yaz says, like the difference matters somehow.

“No, it isn’t,” he corrects gently. “Her true name has been lost to Time. Do you know the question yet?”

“What question?”

He hums, unsatisfied, and begins to reel in his empty line.

“You will,” he breathes. “I have faith in you, Yasmin Khan.”

She swallows, shifting uneasily on the sharp ground beneath her. “Why me?” she asks. “Why haven’t you spoken with the Doctor? I’m just—I’m just—“

He bows his head in what might be shame.

“She’s as trapped as I was,” he says quietly. “And I can’t—I can’t—“ He shakes his head. “I can’t look her in the eye,” he says, strangely. “I tried to atone,” he mutters, “and I got it all wrong. I got it all wrong, and now you’re paying for it. It’s up to you, Yasmin Khan,” he says. “Never just.”

“ _What_ is up to me?” she demands.

“I was blind,” he says reedily, staring over his fishing line to the sea beyond. “I didn’t see what was in front of me until it was too late. But I realized, near the end,” he says. “I knew he would lure another. I set a contingency in place.”

“Contingency?”

“In plain sight,” he breathes intently, clapping her on the knee with a gnarled hand. “But it’s only fit for the worthy. I had to be sure,” he mutters, eyes far away, still. “I had to be sure to get it right, this time.”

“Get what right?” Yaz whispers.

For the first time he turns to her, dark eyes twinkling.

“Find me,” he tells her, with a strange little smile, “the white lance, drenched in blood.”

And then, of course, she wakes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all i am VIBING with this again
> 
> thank you for being so patient, I hope you enjoy! I'd love to know what you thought <3


	5. v.

Another day passes, the sun boiling high in the sky, the sea glinting below it. Severn takes the Doctor to the lower city, where only the most destitute make their homes, and Melin won’t follow.

“It’s not safe or proper,” she tells Yaz, as they stroll along the sea wall. “And even worse in the dark.”

The dark, Yaz thinks to herself, must be the key. Whatever secrets the city still holds won’t reveal themselves in the light. But getting to the dark in the first place is proving to be more of a problem than she’d expected.

“Your husband said things went peculiar here, at night,” she says. “What sort of peculiar did he mean?”

Melin glances at her sideways, brow furrowed. “It’s just stories,” she says, shaking her head. “Ghostly tales and the like. To scare away trouble, I always thought. There’s nothing supernatural about Ransek,” she breathes tiredly. “Even our wizards aren’t really magic. Apparently.”

“Is it worse, in the lower city?”

“Not especially,” Melin admits.

Yaz frowns. “So why can’t we go there, then?”

They pause along the wall, wind rustling their skirts. Some of the salt breeze rips Yaz’s hair from its plait.

“I grew up there,” Melin says finally, tugging Yaz further along. Even her thin, lifeless hair glints prettily in the sun. “I don’t like going back. She’ll be alright,” she insists, glancing briefly at Yaz again. “It’ll be just like yesterday. He’ll take her where she’s most needed, and then they’ll return. In the meantime—“

She doesn’t stop moving. The two of them stay sweeping gently along the outskirts of the wall. It’s all part of whatever charade they’re playing at, Yaz assumes, but as usual, no one will let her in on the details.

“In the meantime,” Yaz continues curiously, “what?”

“I thought you might like to see more of the city. More of its history. I don’t know what you’re looking for, but—“

“I don’t either,” Yaz admits.

“I’ll take you to the stone,” Melin offers.

“I’ve already seen it.”

“Oh.”

“But,” Yaz allows, watching the other woman’s shoulders fall. “Maybe it’s worth another look.”

The dream sits in the back of her mind as they make their way to the bottom of the city. Past the poorly thatched houses and weathered stone that Yaz had found so charming when they’d first arrived, through the narrow streets and winding paths that lead to the top. Even from the bottom, the rainforest glistening just beyond,the clocktower gleams like a beacon when she turns to glance behind her.

The Doctor is somewhere in that winding mess of scattered, brine-soaked houses. Yaz hadn’t noticed before, but the sea’s encroach is even more pronounced, here. Water pools in the divets of cobblestone, soaks into the stone, into their shoes. Her skirts are grimy and damp by the time they make their way out of the city proper, to the outskirts and the stone.

The sword gleams in the tropical light.

It can’t be the lance he was talking about. Yaz is no expert in medieval weapons, but the sword is broad and heavy where it jams into the rock below it, bloodless. A lance is thin and long. But she trails behind Melin anyway as they approach. The crowd—thinner than it had been the first time she’d visited—parts at the sight of Melin, and for the first time, Yaz can look at it up close.

“How long’s it been here?” she asks curiously, eyes catching on the rust, the moss growing on the north face of the stone, up the side of the sword.

“I don’t know,” Melin says, watching her watch it, an unreadable look on her face. “I’m not a historian, I’m afraid.” She glances furtively behind her, back at the lower dregs of the city. “I barely know my letters,” she admits, more quietly. “At least a generation or two, though. The wizard placed it. It was one of his gifts.”

Yaz rocks back on her heels, frowning. “Yeah, but. _Why_?”

“Why not? Swords are meant to be placed into stones,” Melin says. “Aren’t they?”

“But there must be something special about it.”

“Well, it’s the king’s sword.”

“Which king?”

“I don’t know.”

Yaz shakes her head. “Melin, no offense, but this place is proper weird.”

“Perhaps it’s just different,” Melin replies, a bit primly. But her eyes drag to the sword. She considers it. “The story is more important than the details. And the sword—it’s a reminder,” she says slowly. “Of what we were, I think. For the poor, it’s a reminder of when things were much worse. And for people like my husband—“ She breathes in carefully. She glances behind her again. “I think it’s a reminder of everything they lost.”

“It doesn’t seem like things have really got that much better,” Yaz points out. “Since the kingdom fell.” _Your husband’s seen to that_ , she doesn’t say.

For once, Melin doesn’t disagree. “Perhaps you’re right,” she breathes softly. “It’s so easy to forget, up there.” The clocktower still looms, far above them now.

“Do you ever see your family, Melin?” Yaz ventures quietly, mindful of the people around them, despite the conspicuous space they’ve been allowed. “Doesn’t your position benefit them?”

Melin’s eyes don’t roam from the sword.

“I see them,” she says quietly. Her gaze finally lifts, hair shifting with the wind. She takes Yaz’s hand and points to a lush, tree-covered mound in the distance. “They’re buried over there.”

A solitary tower sits at the top of the mound, bursting through the overgrown trees, the lush undergrowth. Even at a distance, moss crawls up the side. The sun glints through a single gap in the top of the tower.

“I’m sorry,” Yaz breathes, hand dropping to her side. “I should’ve thought—“

“It’s alright,” Melin objects, glancing at her with confusion. “It was a long time ago, now. A few summers, at least.”

“That doesn’t sound so long.” Yaz reaches for her hand again.

Melin lets her take it, but her eyes are very far away. “I used to think on how unfair it was, that I should live while they died. Then—“ She glances sideways at Yaz again, almost furtive. “For a while, I thought that perhaps the unfairness was not that I lived, but that they died at all. Some of the stories say death used to be rare around here,” she breathes, brow furrowing. “Rare and peaceful. People passed in their sleep, at the end of long lives. There was no illness, no pain. Just a shining city on the sea.”

“Walled off from all that were around it,” Yaz finishes.

“Yes.” Melin drops her hand. “I suppose that was the price.”

They walk back the way they came, along the sea wall. Yaz eyes the edges of it again as they pass, the pink and white corals growing out of the rock. The wind whistles into the porous holes, pitches and tilts, almost like a song.

When she glances up, Melin’s eyes are half-closed. A mild smile is softening her face.

“I like the wind music,” she says quietly. “You can hear it best in the evenings, at the edges of the city.”

“It’s all coral down there, past the rock,” Yaz says, wishing the Doctor were there to ask. She hates guesswork. “Yeah? From the sea. I’ve never seen so much of it, though. Never heard it make a sound, before.”

She thinks briefly, fleetingly, of the island in her mind’s eye.

“It must go on forever,” she says quietly. “To get that kind of noise.”

Melin’s smile doesn’t budge. “The city is built overtop it. It was another of the wizard’s gifts. Do you know the story?”

“There’s a story for everything here,” Yaz marvels.

“Just one story,” Melin says, moving forward again slowly, eyes drifting out towards the sea. “A long story. It has many branches,” she says lightly, “like a tree. They spread and drift from one another. Some diverge. Others grow together.”

“I think I know what you mean.” It’s funny, Yaz thinks, drifting alongside Melin as she wanders. The way stories build themselves around places, between places, beneath places. The way they echo themselves. Ransek has the shape of a hundred cities Yaz could name, and so do its legends.

“I’ll tell you the version I hear in the upper city,” Melin says. She straightens imperceptibly, shakes her hair behind her shoulders. Nose up, the slightest, slyest hint of cheek in the corners of her eyes. “Once,” she breathes, “there was a barren, empty place. A kingdom of rocks and sickness, on the shores of an unforgiving sea. The people of this kingdom lived by the sun, and by their king. And their king was young and brave and clever, but even he could not bring rain or good health or bountiful harvest. So the king wished on a star, which fell to the ground, and in the star there was a wizard.” Melin recites quietly, hand trailing against the cragged stone wall. “It was lonely in the sky, you see. That was why he fell. The wizard offered many gifts, in exchange for the kindness and companionship he’d been lacking. So the king welcomed the wizard as one of his own, and in return he asked the king what he might do to repay him. The king asked first for greatness, and the wizard bestowed him with a sword that he might pull from a stone to prove his worth. Then the king asked for a grand home for his people, and so the wizard built a city on the sea out of the remains of his own star.” Her hand stops along the wall. The wind song echoes mournfully through the corals, up through the stone. “Finally, the king asked for glory. And so the wizard granted him eternal life, so that his rule would never end. Three gifts,” Melin breathes. “It’s only ever three, isn’t it.”

“Eternal life,” Yaz repeats. “Only it weren’t so eternal, then.”

“I suppose not.”

“You said that was the story you heard in the upper city. What’s the story they tell in the lower city?”

Melin’s hands clasp in front of her. It’s not quite nervous, but it melts the put-on poshness from her shoulders, from the upward slant of her nose. “It goes a bit differently,” she says.

“Nothing wrong with different.”

Melin’s eyes flick towards her. “Once,” she breathes quietly, “there was a barren, empty place. A kingdom of rocks and sickness on the shores of an unforgiving sea. And a vain and terrible king,” she all but whispers. “His kingdom was rotting, you see. There was no rain, and no harvest, and no food. The king had made war with his neighbours, and so his subjects starved and his soldiers died and his wealth dwindled and dwindled. Until one day, a traveller fell from the sky. The traveller was from the stars,” Melin says, eyes drawn again out to the sea, to the sun melting across the sky. She pauses, palms resting on the cragged rock. “And they had no way back.”

“The wizard.”

“Just a traveller,” Melin says, shaking her head. “But like all travellers, they brought many gifts with them. The king coveted these gifts. He coveted the stars themselves, but there was no way to bring them down, and no way for him to reach them. So he plied the traveller with wine and food and good company, instead. He gave the traveller a home, when they had none. And one day, just like the king had planned, the traveller offered three gifts in return for the king’s kindness.”

“Greatness,” Yaz guesses, crossing her arms against the sea breeze.

Melin smiles weakly. “Not quite. The traveller, having been plied with wine, told many stories about themself, and about the rest of the universe. The king learned that the traveller came from a great warrior race, and so first he asked for a sword that would never bend in battle, to put an end to the wars that so plagued him.”

“And conquer his enemies in the meantime.”

“Well, naturally. So the traveller forged the king a sword, on the condition that the king only wield it once. So the king fought and won his wars, and when he returned, he placed the sword in a stone. Having conquered everything his eye could see, the king asked for an impenetrable fortress to rule it from. Now, the traveller had fallen from the sky in a grand ship, which was beyond repair. So the traveller built the king a walled city on the sea, out of the ship’s remains.”

“Their own _ship_ ,” Yaz repeats, a chill crawling up her spine. Far below, the coral moans and creaks. The sound, Yaz realizes with a sinking heart, is terribly familiar.

“Finally,” Melin breathes, “the king asked for his last gift. More than anything, he wanted what the traveller from the stars had.”

Yaz closes her eyes. “Eternal life.”

“The traveller couldn’t grant it,” Melin says quietly. “They could heal the sick and mend the injured. They could build wonderful machines, to bring rain and better harvests. But they couldn’t extend _life_. Furious, the king withdrew to his fortress and banished the traveller to the undercity for the rest of time.”

“ _Under_ city?”

“Tunnels,” Melin explains. “Holes, in the coral, in the stone. They really exist, I’ve seen them. But they’re terribly dangerous. Sometimes they collapse and let the water in. My mother used to say one day they’d all cave in and we’d fall into the sea.” She glances up, at the clocktower always in the distance. “The bells are meant to ring, if it ever happens. To give us enough time to get to shore.”

Yaz files the tunnels away for later, mind drawn uncomfortably to the Doctor’s watery, subterranean prison.

“They’re very different stories,” she says.

“They’re saying different things.” Melin steps away from the edge of the wall reluctantly, skirts sweeping the stone underfoot. “They’ll return soon. We should go back.” She looks up at Yaz, milky eyes shining in the slowly waning sunlight. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “For being so kind to me. I haven’t spoken so much in many summers.”

“Maybe you just needed someone to talk to,” Yaz says, as warmly as she can muster. It’s hard not to pity her, but she’d always hated being pitied. Melin is worth more as a friend than as a tragic figure.

“Perhaps you’re right.”

“Besides,” Yaz adds, as they begin to make their way back to Severn’s home. “You’re better company than you give yourself credit for.”

“Do you really mean it?”

“Of course I do. And I’m from Yorkshire, so that’s basically a gushing compliment.”

“The planet of Yorkshire,” Melin marvels. “It is very strange indeed, to imagine other worlds among the stars. Even stranger, to know of them but be unable to reach them. You’re very lucky, to be so well-travelled.”

Yaz stops in her tracks. “I suppose I am.” She swallows. “It’s more about the travelling itself, rather than the destination, I think. The journey. I’m trying to make the most of it.”

Melin pauses with her, brow crinkling. “Do you expect it to end?”

“Everything ends.”

“Your Doctor, does she end?”

“That,” Yaz breathes, pressing forward again, “is what I’m trying to find out.”

The late day sun is hot on the side of her face as they trek back towards the governor’s residence. Really, Yaz supposes, watching it rise above the other stone buildings as they approach, it must have been the king’s castle, once. It has all the drapings of a castle, still. All of the grandeur, but the stone is sun-faded and brine-soaked. It sits nearly empty. Just the leftovers of something far grander. Where does the story end and the history begin? That’s the question that really needs answering, but the suspicion is starting to sink in—that here, more than anywhere, it’s not a question with an answer.

“Yaz,” Melin says into her ear as they near it, stepping off the sea wall carefully. She grabs Yaz’s elbow for support, speaking quickly, mindful of the smattering of guards that line the residence’s entrance. “I’ve had an idea.”

“An idea?” She makes an effort not to sound surprised.

“Be my lady-in-waiting,” she says, one hand still clasped around Yaz’s elbow, the skin of her palm clammy with sweat. When Yaz glances down in surprise, her eyes are wide and watery and utterly sincere. “It—it would be a clever ruse. I have none at the moment, no chamber maids, either. We couldn’t afford them. I—“ And her mouth closes over. “I’ve spoken to him, before,” she says quietly. “Of being lonely. He won’t find it strange. If you’re truly to uncover what’s going on here, then you need a place.” Her voice settles firmly. “You need a reason, you need an excuse. You need someone,” she says lowly, “on the inside.”

“The Doctor needs me,” Yaz says firmly.

Melin’s wide eyes don’t falter from her face. “You could still see her. Perhaps it’s hard for you to understand, but I am _invisible_ , here.” Her breath shudders. “All women are. Let me use it to our advantage.”

Yaz shakes her head. Her braid doesn’t move, the hairs clinging to the back of her neck with sweat. “I can’t just leave her down there at night,” she says. “She—“

 _She doesn’t need you for company_. The voice at the back of her head is insidious and loud, and for a moment she hates herself for listening to it. _Even when you’re together, you’re alone in the dark_.

“You can’t help her from down there,” Melin points out tentatively. “You’re as trapped as she is. But my husband doesn’t see you, I _know_ he doesn’t. You’re just extra. Just—just a body.” She swallows. “I know I may not be much help, but—“

“You’re right.”

Melin blinks, surprised.

“And you’re plenty of help,” Yaz continues. The sun glints off the metal armour of the guards as they pass through the front gate, unscrutinized. Her skin prickles with the realization. “If I do this,” she says, heart pounding, “will you take me down into the undercity?”

Melin blanches, but keeps her expression neutral, her voice low. “Yes,” she hisses reluctantly. “I will.”

“Then it’s a deal, your ladyship. Give me one more night, to tell the Doctor.”

“There’s no need for all that,” Melin says, a smile crossing her face. She glances at Yaz slyly. “Though I wouldn’t object to a curtsey.”

“In these skirts? I can barely _walk_.”

“You’ll learn.”

“I hope not. Don’t plan on being here long enough.” Melin’s shoulders slump imperceptibly, so she changes the subject quickly. “Thanks, Melin. For your idea.”

“Thank you, for listening.” Melin takes her elbow, skirts dragging against the weathered stone. Another armoured guard opens the wooden doors at the entrance for them without a word or a sideways glance. “We must be careful, of course. But at least up here, you have half a hope.”

The doors close behind them with a muffled creak and a heavy bang. The warm air and the sun from outside only linger for a moment, before the chill of the stone walls overtakes it all. The velvet drapes that line the windows soak up all light.

Yaz exhales. “I hope you’re right.”

Severn returns with the Doctor long past the sunset. Dinner is late, and the world beyond the curtains is dark, but his mood is buoyant.

“Good tidings to you, little mayfly,” he says, raising his glass in her direction from the end of the table. “And to you, my wife.” His gaze lingers on her face, where the barest hint of sunburn brushes across her nose. “You have touched the sun, today.”

“Yes, my lord,” Melin says softly. “Showing our guest the beautiful sights of the city. There is so much to see.”

His smile broadens. “So much, indeed. It is a fair city. Do you not agree, Doctor?”

“Oh yeah,” the Doctor agrees mockingly, eyebrows raising. “If you like excessive fortification.”

There’s a stripe of sunburn across her nose, too, and a mardy streak in her voice that Yaz hasn’t heard in months. She hasn’t looked at Yaz once, since her return.

If Severn catches the scorn in her voice, he doesn’t appear bothered by it. “Fortification keeps us all safe from harm,” he says warmly. “So it is very fair indeed. It is a reassurance, to those who are too weak to protect themselves.”

“Too weak to protect themselves,” the Doctor says, leaning her elbows on the table pointedly. “But that’s on purpose, isn’t it? Keep your people poor and desperate, so they have no choice but to rely on you.”

Severn’s smile doesn’t falter.

“And you,” he says. “They rely on you too, now, Doctor.” His hair glints in the lamplight as his gaze shifts to Yaz and Melin. “You should have seen her today,” he laments. “The people adore her.”

The Doctor looks away. She still won’t meet Yaz’s eyes.

“Your people are desperate,” she says quietly.

“But who wouldn’t adore someone so humble?” Severn asks of them. His smile never falters, but when Yaz dares to look, she finds flint in his eyes, finally. Irritation, fighting with his good mood. The Doctor does tend to have that effect, she supposes. “I know you are tired, my friend.” He returns his attention to the Doctor. “I know the state of my people has upset you. It upsets me, too. Our work continues.”

The Doctor’s hands clasp together in front of her, knuckles white. She raises her head slowly. “And what work is that?” she wonders flatly.

Severn only smiles, before a knock at the door interrupts. He snaps his fingers and a serving boy scuttles to answer it.

Yaz glances to Melin, eyebrows raising, but Melin shakes her head. The Doctor keeps her eyes fixed on her hands, feigning disinterest, but for the tense line of her back. The rest of them watch, carefully nonchalant, as the serving boy darts back to whisper in Severn’s ear.

His smile broadens with even greater delight. “Bring it in,” he demands, standing as the boy slips away again. The buttons of his shirt glint with the movement. “This, Doctor,” he breathes, as a guard clanks purposefully across the room, a velveted pillow in ginger hand. “ _This_ is the work.”

A velveted pillow, Yaz realizes, stomach dropping. And a white lance, placed gently in the centre. It’s longer than she imagined it would be. Thinner, too. So white that it gleams in the eerie lamplight, but rusted near the tip.

Blood-drenched, Yaz thinks, mouth dry.

“Give my thanks to those who recovered this,” Severn says reverently, hand hovering over the blade’s hilt. He doesn’t touch it. Is it fear in his eyes, or admiration? She can’t tell, in the gloom. “My thanks and the recognition they deserve.” He snaps his fingers again. “Put it with the collection.”

The guard retreats. Yaz’s eyes follow the lance. Her pulse is so loud in her ears she can barely hear anything else.

“Your sword collection is the work?” The Doctor’s nose wrinkles, out of the corner of her eye. “Typical. Well, I say typical. I suppose at least it’s not a killer robot collection.”

“It’s not the sword,” Severn says, still in a hush. “It’s what it represents.” He shakes his head minutely. “If you knew how long I had been searching…well, it’s no matter. This is a sign.”

The chair at the head of the table creaks as he seats himself again.

“Greater things are now afoot, my friend.” When the Doctor only looks away pointedly, cheek coming to rest on one hand, he sighs. “You will come to see it, too. For now we all must rest.” He smiles at each of them in turn. Yaz’s stomach flips uneasily, as his eyes skate her own, but he doesn’t linger on her, or his wife. Melin is right. They’re all but invisible, here.

“In the morning,” he breathes, delight in the corners of his mouth, the youthful corners of his eyes, “we will speak of all that is to come.”

The damp of Aurelius’ quarters—where he was banished to, Yaz realizes uneasily, if the story tells the truth—seems to only grow with every night they spend in it. The Doctor never seems to care. As the door closes behind them, she makes a beeline for where the book is hidden, shoulders tight.

“Doctor, that lance,” Yaz ventures, lingering by the door. “D’you know what it is?”

The Doctor’s nose wrinkles as she turns from the bed. “A sword? Just a sword. Never been a big fan of swords, I prefer spoons.”

“Yeah, but—“ Yaz moves in closer, neck prickling. The rug squelches under her feet. “You don’t think there’s anything special about it?”

“What’s special about any sword?” She hums in mild disdain, already lost in the book again, sinking down into the dungeon’s only chair without another thought. “Just another way to hurt people.”

“But _this_ one, though. I thought—“ Yaz swallows. “You’re not even listening to me. Why won’t you look at me?”

At the censure in her voice, the Doctor finally glances up, half-panicked. “I’m _listening_ ,” she protests, and under the trap of Yaz’s gaze her eyes are rimmed red with exhaustion. Skin sallow, cheeks hollow. Half-dead already, and Yaz’s skin crawls with the fear of it.

“You look like a corpse,” she says.

“Oh, and like you couldn’t do with a wash,” she shoots back, burying herself in the book again. “I wasn’t gonna mention it.”

“Doctor—“

“It’s _fine_.”

There’s no way to tell where it ends and begins, the anger stewing in the pit of her stomach. It’s sheer terror eating its own tail, turning and twisting to become something else. Something useful, she hopes, unwinding the Doctor’s coat from where it’s been sitting at her waist all day, gathering sweat, fading in the sun.

She drapes it back over the Doctor’s shoulders.

“Fine, then. Melin’s offered me a position as her lady-in-waiting,” she says quietly. The Doctor doesn’t look up from the book, but her nose twitches.

“And?”

“And I’m gonna take it,” she says, plunging ahead, rounding the chair again until the Doctor has no choice but to face her. “I need a better excuse to get around the castle and the city. And I can’t do it if I’m locked in here with you at night.”

“Who says you’re locked in?” the Doctor wonders, non-plussed. She wets a finger with her tongue to turn the next page.

“I know the sonic doesn’t do stone,” Yaz says dryly. The Doctor’s nose wrinkles. “And I know for a fact that it don’t do swords, and the blokes outside the door have got plenty of them.”

“I could get out, if I wanted,” is all the Doctor says.

“So why don’t you?”

Her lips press together. She closes the book gently. She doesn’t look at Yaz.

“You could talk to me, y’know,” Yaz says tiredly. “You could tell me why you’re doing this. It’s not just you. This isn’t just about you.”

“If you’d _left_ —“

It’s just the same argument, replayed and replayed.

“You promised me,” she says steadily, “that you wouldn’t disappear again. And I’m not lettin’ you go, so why do we have to keep talking about it? What are we _doing_ here, Doctor?”

“I don’t know,” she says, so quickly and quietly that it barely sounds like words. “I need—I _need_ —“

Her nose wrinkles again. She glances down at the book. Yaz thinks of Gallifrey, burnt and burning. She thinks of the twisted remains of the other TARDIS, crushed against the rocks and the sea wall. She thinks of the man in her dreams.

“I learned some things,” the Doctor whispers eventually. “On Gallifrey. But there’s nothing left to learn there.”

 _There’s nothing left at all_ , Yaz thinks but doesn’t say.

“You think you might learn them here?” she wonders.

“Maybe.”

“Let me help, then. If I go along with Melin, I’ll have all kinds of access you don’t have. I’ll be able to get to places you won’t.” _I’ve been dreaming things you don’t._

“It might be dangerous.”

“I’m not just gonna wait here and watch you—“ Yaz swallows. “Watch you give yourself away to these people.”

“I’m just trying to help,” she says mildly.

“You’re not helping them, they’re _using you_ ,” Yaz insists.

“And _I’m_ using them,” she says, turning away, shoulders tight. “Do what you’d like, Yaz,” she says eventually. “I can’t stop you, clearly. But let me do this my way. Let me do what I have to.”

Anger like an ouroboros twists in her gut, pulses up her veins to the back of her head.

“Fine,” she says shortly. “I’m going upstairs, then.”

“ _Fine_.”

“Y’know, you should really sleep,” she says, and spins on her heels. “You look awful.”

Getting the last word, however petty, brings no satisfaction. The Doctor’s comebacks are terrible on a good day, and the offended gasp she hears as the door closes between them is no different.

She leans her head against the back of the door and closes her eyes. Just for a moment. Just until she can’t hear her heart in her ears anymore.

When she opens them again, the guard stationed at the top of the stairs is standing before her, a large ring of keys dangling from one hand. He tilts his head in askance.

“Go for it,” she says, brittle. “I won’t be coming back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (PRESIDENTIAL ALERT: the girls are FIGHTINGGGGG) (no matter their incarnation the doctor is universally A Complete Asshole when they're going thru it and i love that for all of us, personally)
> 
> long time no see! in my defense i have literally translated medieval french doing research for this fic so NO ONE COME FOR ME, I'VE COME FOR MYSELF, WHY IS THE CANON OF ARTHURIAN MYTH SO EXTENSIVE 
> 
> anyway that being said i have taken Truly Massive Liberties with everything and also borrowed extensively from other myths so it's probably fairly unrecognizeable anyway but I am having FUN and that's all that matters at the end of the day. Right? Yes? Well, anyway, thank you for reading, I'd love to know what you thought!

**Author's Note:**

> what's up it's your girl, queen of starting new wips in the midst of general chaos and also like, three other ongoing projects kjfghlkdfhgkfdg
> 
> for real though, nothing is abandoned, i'm just the human embodiment of brain soup these days and we all have to take what we can get, right? anyway, I'm delving back into the dusty corners of my brain with this vague-ass take on Arthurian myth, and I hope you enjoy! More on the way, and in the meantime I'd really love to hear what you thought! <3 
> 
> as always, you can find me on tumblr @sunshinedaysforever


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